SENATOR  FROM  ILLINOIS 


I  am  not  pleading  that  I  am  the  only  one  who  has  made  his  way 
through  this  world  and  is  now  sitting  in  the  Senate,  nor  am  I  pleading 
poverty  or  hard  knocks  as  a  reason  why  I  should  sit  in  this  body. 
I  am  giving  to  the  Senators  the  truth  as  to  why  these  men  voted  for 
me  for  United  States  Senator.  I  am  not  pleading  for  sympathy.  I  do 
not  want  sympathy.  This  is  not  a  question  of  sympathy.  It  is  a 
question  of  right  or  wrong.  If  the  Senate  can  believe  me  to  be  the 
low,  vile  creature  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  and  the  Senator 
from  New  York  and  other  Senators  who  have  talked  against  me  would 
have  you  believe  me  to  be,  then  there  is  a  plain  duty  staring  you 
squarely  in  the  face,  regardless  of  the  testimony  in  this  record.  If  I 
could  be  the  foul  wretch  that  you.  Senators,  have  sought  to  paint  me, 
regardless  of  how  I  came  here,  by  right  or  by  wrong,  I  should  be 
driven  from  yonder  "door  with  the  stamp  of  infamy  branded  upon  my 
back.  I  am  not  pleading  for  sympathy.  I  am  trying  to  narrate  the 
truth  of  my  election  as  it  was,  not  as  Senators  would  have  the  Senate 
believe  it. 


SPEECH  OF 

HON.  WILLIAM  LORIMER 

OF  ILLINOIS 

IN   THE 

SENATE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

FEBRUARY  22,  1911 


WASHINGTON 
1911 


81979-0726 


SPEECH 

OF 

HON.  WILLIAM  LORIMER. 


The  Senate  having  under  consideration  the  report  of  the  Committee 
on  Privileges  and  Elections  relating  to  charges  preferred  against  Wil- 
liam Lorimer,  a  Senator  from  the  State  of  Illinois — 

Mr.  LORIMER  said : 

Mr.  PRESIDENT:  I  understand  that  the  senior  Senator  from 
Indiana  [Mr.  BEVERIDGE]  was  discussing  the  Illinois  election 
yesterday  and  failed  to  conclude  his  remarks.  I  prefer  to  go 
on  with  my  remarks  at  this  time,  but  if  the  Senator  from  In- 
diana desires  to  conclude  his  remarks  before  I  proceed  I  shall 
be  very  glad  to  yield  the  floor  for  that  purpose. 

Mr.  BEVERIDGE:  The  Senator  can  proceed.  Besides,  he 
does  so  under  a  unanimous  consent  agreement,  and  it  would  not 
be  possible  for  me  to  change  it. 

Mr.  LORIMER:  Mr.  President,  many  questions  have  been 
suggested  by  the  statements  of  Senators  in  the  debate  on  this 
case.  Those  suggestions  concern  mostly  the  actual  condition  of 
my  election  to  this  body. 

Did  I  organize  the  Illinois  Legislature  against  Hopkins? 

Did  I  make  Shurtleff  speaker  in  order  to  be  elected  Senator? 

Did  I  make  Lee  O'Neil  Browne  my  agent — my  corrupt 
agent  ? 

Why  did  I  stay  in  Springfield  during  the  contest? 

For  what  purpose  did  I  talk  to  Shepherd  in  the  speaker's 
room? 

Why  did  the  Democrats  vote  for  me? 

These  are  some  of  the  questions  suggested  by  the  statements 
of  Senators  in  opposition  to  the  committee  report  or  openly 
put  by  them  in  the  course  of  debate.  To  these  questions  many 
sorts  of  answers  have  been  given  by  my  opponents.  Some  of 
those  answers  have  been  fanciful  theories,  some  mere  guesses 
and  surmises.  There  is  only  one  kind  of  answer  that  should 
stand  or  that  should  count  in  this  case ;  that  is  the  plain  matter- 
of-fact  simple  truth.  It  is  this  matter  of  fact,  this  truth,  that 
I  propose  to  lay  before  the  Senate  to-day. 

I  rise  to-day  simply  to  tell,  as  one  who  lived  through  it  all, 
exactly  how  my  election  at  Springfield  was  brought  about,  to 
answer  the  foregoing  questions  with  the  facts  that  alone  can 
answer  them  correctly. 

There  has  been  an  effort  made  to  cover  this  whole  case  with 
a  cloud  of  suspicion,  to  make  it  appear  that  some  man  with  a 
powerful  intellect,  a  powerful  ability  to  organize  men,  by  some 
well-laid  scheme  prepared  a  plan  to  organize  the  legislature 
for  the  purpose  of  defeating  Senator  Hopkins  and  to  elect  a 
United  States  Senator.  Some  Senators  have  intimated  that  that 
man  with  the  powerful  mind  and  wonderful  genius  of  organiza- 
tion was  no  other  person  than  myself.  I  propose  to  address  my- 
self to  the  statements  made  by  those  Senators  and  on  which  they 
expect  to  build  the  structure  that  will  create  in  the  minds  of 
Senators  in  this  body  the  impression  that  I  was  not  only,  as  they 
say,  elected  by  corrupt  practices,  but  that  I  am  the  man  that 
was  responsible  for  them. 

2  81970—9726 


To  begin  with,  Mr.  President,  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota 
[Mr.  CRAWFORD]  in  his  statement  said: 

It  is  also  clear  from  the  record  that  Mr.  LORIMKR  was  determined  to 
organize  the  legislature  against  Hopkins  and  Gov.  Deneen. 

Anybody  who  knows  aught  of  the  organization  of  that  legis- 
lature would  not  make  that  statement.  The  facts  are  that  I 
was  not  determined  to  organize  the  legislature  against  Gov. 
Deneen,  and,  if  I  had  'been  so  determined,  under  the  conditions 
existing  at  that  time,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  me  to 
do  so.  To  organize  a  legislature  with  the  aid  of  Democrats  and 
Republicans  is  a  matter  that  can  not  be  done  just  by  a  wish  or 
a  thought.  It  requires  constant  effort  to  bring  about  a  condition 
of  that  sort,  which  Senators  would  have  us  understand  was  a 
well-defined  plan  in  the  head  ef  just  one  man. 

It  happened  that  on  the  15th  of  September  I  was  stricken  with 
illness,  and  from  that  day  until  November  I  was  unable  to  leave 
•my  home.  My  physicians  would  not  even  permit  friends  to  call 
upon  me.  I  "did  not  leave  home  until  just  a  few  days  before  the 
general  November  election,  when  I  went  to  my  office  where  I 
might  be  seen  for  an  hour  during  each  day  in  order  that  the 
public  might  know  that  there  was  hope  for  my  recovery,  as  it 
nad  been  stated  in  the  congressional  district  in  which  I  was  a 
candidate  for  re-election  that  LORIMER  was  about  to  die,  and 
"they  had  better  elect  somebody  who  would  be  alive  when  the 
governor  issues  the  certificate  of  election." 

Immediately  after  the  election  I  took  the  train  for  the  Pacific 
coast  to  go  into  the  mountains  for  my  health,  and  I  traveled 
along  the  Pacific  coast,  and  finally  landed  in  the  city  of  Port- 
land. I  remember  well  speaking  for  a  few  moments  during  my 
presence  there  to  the  Commercial  Association  of  that  city  about 
waterway  improvements,  and  the  senior  Senator  from  that 
State  [Mr.  CHAMBERLAIN]  was  present  at  that  meeting.  A  day 
or  two  after  that  I  was  again  stricken,  with  blood  poisoning; 
was  operated  upon,  and  lived,  in  the  Portland  Hotel,  until  I  was 
taken  back  to  Chicago,  accompanied  almost  the  whole  distance 
to  my  city  by  my  surgeon.  From  there  I  returned  to  Washing- 
ton, as  will  be  shown  by  the  CONGRESSIONAL  RECORD  of  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  House  of  Representatives.  There  it  can  be 
found  that  I  voted  during  the  early  part  of  that  session.  After 
the  holidays,  on  the  very  day  on  which  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  elected 
speaker,  I  was  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  and  the  RECORD 
shows  that  I  made  a  motion  on  the  7th  day  of  January,  the  day 
following  his  election. 

Edward  Shurtleff  was  elected  speaker  of  the  house  of  repre- 
sentatives because  of  a  condition  that  arose  there,  and  if  the 
same  condition  arose  anywhere  else  in  the  country  the  result 
would  have  been  the  same.  The  governor  of  our  State  was  very 
much  opposed  to  the  re-alection  of  Mr.  Shurtleff  and  he  called  in 
a  few  of  the  men,  members  of  the  State  house  of  representa- 
tives, over  whom  he  had  much  influence,  and  told  them  that 
they  must  organize  that  body  by  the  election  of  some  person 
speaker  other  than  Edward  Shurtleff.  He  told  them  that  he 
did  not  care  who  was  elected  speaker,  but  that  under  no  circum- 
stances must  any  Republican  vote  for  Edward  Shurtleff,  and 
if  Aey  did  vote  for  him,  he  served  notice  on  them  that  not  one 
of  them  could  expect  to  receive  patronage  at  the  hands  of  his 
administration,  and  he  went  even  further  than  that. 
81979—9726 


He  called  in  Representative  Brady,  who  had  pledged  his  sup- 
port to  ShurtleflT  for  speaker,  and  told  him  unless  he  joined  with 
the  men  who  were  trying  to  organize  that  body  under  his  dicta- 
torship, every  man  who  was  in  the  employ  of  the  State  on 
Brady's  recommendation  would  be  forthwith  dismissed.  In 
other  words,  the  governor  of  our  State  undertook  to  dictate  to 
the  general  assembly  who  should  be  its  speaker. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  Will  the  Senator  permit  me  to  ask  him  a 
question? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    I  shall  be  very  glad  to. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  If  that  statement  is  a  statement  of  the 
fact,  I  would  like  to  ask  why  it  was  not  put  in  the  record,  and 
why  Gov.  Deneen  was  not  summoned  as  a  witness,  so  that  "he 
could  confront  a  statement  of  that  kind  and  have  the  same 
opportunity  to  make  reply  to  it  that  the  Senator  has  oppor- 
tunity to  make  the  charge  of  this  floor  after  the  evidence  is  all 
closed. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  I  am  quite  unable  to  answer  the  question  as 
the  Senator  would  desire  to  have  me  do  it,  for  the  reason  that, 
first,  I  was  not  a  member  of  the  committee  that  investigated 
the  charges. 

Mr.  HEYBURN.    Mr.  President 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT.  Does  the  Senator  from  Illinois 
yield  to  the  Senator  from  Idaho? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    Yes. 

Mr.  HEYBURN.  I  think  it  only  fair  as  a  member  of  the 
committee  to  suggest  that  the  Senator  from  Illinois  is  replying 
to  statements  made  upon  the  floor  of  the  Chamber,  and  not  to 
statements  made  in  Chicago  at  the  hearings.  Consequently  he 
could  not  have  anticipated  the  questions  raised  by  Members 
here. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.     Mr.   President 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT.  Does  the  Senator  from  Illinois 
further  yield  to  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    Yes. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  I  should  like  to  have  this  understood 
now.  If  questions  asked  of  the  sitting  Member  are  embarrassing 
because  they  are  being  asked  now  at  this  critical  point  in  the 
case,  and  we  are  to  refrain  on  that  account  from  asking  them, 
I  want  to  know  it,  and  I  will  try  to  observe  the  rule  in  that 
respect. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  May  I  not  say  at  the  outset  that  I  have 
no  objection  to  any  Senator  asking  any  question  that  suggests 
itself  to  him  at  any  time  during  the  discussion  of  this  question. 

Mr.  BURROWS.     Mr.  President 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT.  Does  the  Senator  from  Illinois 
yield  to  the  Senator  from  Michigan? 

Mr.  LORIMER.     Yes. 

Mr.  BURROWS.  May  I  suggest  that  the  Senator  from 
Illinois  be  permitted  to  make  his  statement  in  order,  and  then 
at  the  close  if  any  Senator  desires  to  ask  questions  it  will  be  of 
course  agreeable  to  him.  But  I  think  it  is  no  more  than  fair 
to  the  Senator  that  he  be  permitted  to  make  his  statement  with- 
out interruption. 

Mr.  LORIMER.    Mr.  President 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.    Just  one  word  further 

The   VICE   PRESIDENT.     Does  the   Senator   from   Illinois 
further  yield  to  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota? 
81979—9726 


Mr.  LORIMER.     Yes. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  On  account  of  the  importance  of  this 
matter  1  want  to  understand  the  situation.  If  the  Senator 
from  Illinois  is  simply  making  a  statement  in  the  form  of  an 
argument  and  not  as  a  witness  in  the  case,  I  want  to  know  it. 
If  he  is  making  a  statement  which  he  desires  to  submit  as 
evidence  in  this  case,  then  it  seems  to  me  we  should  have  the 
opportunity  to  cross-examine  him  if  we  desire. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  Again  I  wish  to  state  that  while  I  appre- 
ciate the  courtesy  which  the  Senator  from  Michigan  desires  to 
have  extended  to  me,  that  I  may  proceed  with  my  remarks 
without  interruption,  I  shall  have  no  hesitancy  at  any  point 
during  the  time  I  have  the  floor  in  answering  any  question 
that  any  Senator  may  see  fit  to  ask. 

I  stated  that  I  was  in  no  way  connected  with  the  committee 
which  investigated  these  charges  and  had  no  right  to  summon 
Mr.  Deneen.  During  the  whole  investigation,  from  the  day  that 
I  submitted  the  resolution  last  May  to  make  this  inquiry,  no 
Senator,  whether  he  be  a  member  of  the  subcommittee,  the 
whole  committee,  or  any  Senator  in  this  body  will  say  that  I 
have  ever  suggested  anything  to  him  or  made  any  appeal  to 
him  or  in  any  way  at  any  time  tried  to  influence  his  judgment 
as  to  how  he  should  vote  in  my  case.  And  so  I  made  no  sug- 
gestions to  the  committee  about  who  should  be  called.  If  the 
Senator  from  South  Dakota  is  dissatisfied  because  the  gov- 
ernor of  our  State  was  not  called  to  refute  these  statements, 
I  am  not  to  blame  for  it.  But  it  would  have  been  impossible 
to.  refute  this  statement,  because  the  cause  for  making  it  was 
not  suggested  to  me  until  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota 
I  Mr.  CRAWFORD]  made  his  speech  upon  this  floor  just  a  short 
time  ago. 

Mr.  President,  the  Senator  in  his  statement  said  that  it  was 
clear  from  the  evidence  that  I  was  determined  to  organize  the 
legislature  for  the  purpose  of  defeating  Senator  Hopkins.  I 
have  in  my  hand  a  list  of  the  Republican  members  of  the 
house — 24  in  all — who  voted  for  Mr.  Shurtleff  for  speaker,  and 
of  the  24  Republicans  who  voted  for  Shurtleff  for  speaker  17 
voted  for  Senator  Hopkins  for  United  States  Senator — some  of 
them  one  day,  some  of  them  a  week,  some  a  month,  some  for 
two  months,  and  some  of  them  voted  for  him  on  every  ballot  on 
which  the  roll  was  called,  including  the  ballot  on  which  I  was 
elected. 

If  the  theory  be  correct  that  I  had  been  conjuring  schemes  to 
organize  the  legislature  for  dark-lantern  purposes,  as  the  Sen- 
ator suggested,  how  can  it  be  proven  by  the  statement  that  I 
was  trying  to  defeat  Hopkins  by  making  Shurtleff  speaker  when 
the  journal  of  the  house  shows  that  17  of  the  24  Republicans 
who  voted  for  Shurtleff  also  voted  for  Hopkins  for  United  States 
Senator? 

Mr.  President,  in  order  that  there  may  be  no  trouble  in  veri- 
fying this  statement,  I  ask  permission  to  have  the  names  printed 
in  the  RECORD  in  order  that  Senators  may -very  easily  consult  the 
journal  of  the  house  and  find  from  it  whether  or  not  this  state- 
ment is  correct. 

The  PRESIDING  OFFICER  (Mr.  BRANDEGEE  in  the  chair). 
Is  there  objection  to  the  request  of  the  Senator  from  Illinois? 
The  Chair  hears  none,  and  the  matter  will  be  printed  in  the 
RECORD. 

81979—9726 


The  matter  referred  to  is  as  follows : 

HOW  REPUBLICANS  WH9  VOTED  FOR  SHURTLEFF  FOR  SPEAKER  VOTED  LATER 
ON    FOR    SENATOR. 


Behrens    Hopkins. 

Bush     Hopkins. 

Chiperfleld    Hopkins. 

Crawford Hopkins. 

Curran     Shurtleff. 

Dudgeon    Hopkins. 

Erby Hopkins. 

Glllespie    Hopkins. 

Glade   Hopkins. 

Hope    Hopkins. 

Ireland     Hopkins. 


Lane     Hopkins. 

Lederer    Mason. 

McNichols    Hopkins. 

Nelson    Hopkins. 

Parker Hopkins. 

Schumacher     Hopkins. 

Shanahan    Shurtleff. 

Sniejkal    Shurtleff. 

Stearns     Foss. 

Zaabel  (died  Jan.  13,  1999). 

Zinger    Hopkins. 

Zipf    Foss. 


Klttleman    ....-> Hopkins. 

Hopkins's  vote,  17. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  Suppose  that  the  President  of  the  United 
States — a  President  of  the  United  States,  I  care  not  who  he 
be — should  call  in  the  Senators  of  his  party,  tell  them  who  he 
wanted  for  President  pro  tempore  of  the  Senate,  tell  them  how 
he  wanted  the  Senate  committees  organized,  tell  them  that 
unless  they  did  his  bidding  they  could  get  no  patronage  under 
his  administration,  and  tell  them  that  if  they  failed  to  do  his 
bidding  every  last  man  employed  by  the  Government  on  their 
recommendation  should  be  driven  from  public  employment. 
Suppose  a  President  could  fall  so  low  as  to  undertake  such  a 
feat  as  that,  and  that  he  succeeded  in  getting  into  an  organi- 
zation a  majority  of  the  members  of  this  body  of  his  own  party 
to  carry  out  his  orders  to  the  exclusion  of  one  man  and  those 
who  were  favorable  to  him ;  what  do  you  suppose  the  Senators 
would  do?  What  do  you  suppose  party  lines  would  accomplish? 
It  would  not  take  the  Senators  of  this  body  one  moment  to  make 
up  their  minds  to  cross  the  party  lines  and  organize  the  Senate 
with  men  who  they  thought  were  fit  to  hold  the  different  offices 
in  the  control  of  this  body. 

The  men  in  our  State  did  what  any  set  of  sensible,  coura- 
geous men  would  do.  They  organized  the  body  regardless  of 
the  wishes  of  the  executive  branch  of  the  government.  If  the 
governor  of  our  State  had  attended  to  his  own  business,  said 
nothing  to  the  members  of  the  house,  permitted  them  without 
coercion  to  go  on  and  organize  that  body,  Mr.  Shurtleff  would 
have  been  the  choice  of  90  per  cent  of  its  members,  and  he  would 
have  been  elected  in  the  Republican  caucus  by  a  unanimous 
vote.  I  call  for  the  journal  of  the  Illinois  Assembly  to  justify 
that  statement. 

Edward  Shurtleff  was  serving  his  fourth  term  in  that  bod}'. 
He  had  twice  been  its  speaker,  elected  twice  before  the  time 
we  are  now  discussing  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  his  party  in 
the  Republican  caucus  and  in  the  lower  house.  So,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, Edward  Shurtleff,  whom  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota 
[Mr.  CRAWFORD]  would  have  you  believe  to  be  a  vile  and  corrupt 
man,  had  twice  before  presided  over  the  house ;  and,  may  I 
say,  he  was  elected  both  times  without  help  from  me,  even 
without  my  knowledge  until  I  saw  the  reports  in  the  paper. 

He  is  not  a  speaker  of  my  making.  He  was  not  a  man  of 
power  because  I  gave  it  to  him.  I  scarcely  knew  him  when  he 
was  elected  speaker  of  that  body  the  first  and  the  second  time. 
He  owes  me  nothing,  not  even  support,  for  promotion  to  that 
great  office  in  our  State.  I  was  not  on  more  than  speak- 
ing terms  with  him  until  I  went  to  Springfield  to  secure 
legislation  on  the  waterway.  I  could  say  no  more  to  him  than 
81979—9726 


"How  do  you  do,  sir,"  until  that  time;  and  the  idea  that  a  man 
could  work  himself  up  through  the  world  and  become  speaker 
of  the  house  of  representatives  of  that  great  State,  without  my 
aid,  and  at  the  same  time  be  known  as  nay  political  henchman, 
is  the  most  absurd  thing  that  I  have  ever  known  to  be  stated  in 
this  body  or  any  other  body  in  which  I  have  ever  served. 

That  I  elected  a  bitter  enemy  of  Hopkins  and  my  henchman 
speaker  is  what  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  [Mr.  CRAW- 
FORD] stated.  The  contrary  is  just  the  truth.  Mr.  Shurtleff 
would  not  have  been  a  member  of  that  general  assembly  but  for 
the  urgent  request  of  Mr.  Hopkins  and  his  friends. 

The  PRESIDING  OFFICER.  The  Senator  will  kindly  sus- 
pend while  the  Chair  lays  before  the  Senate  the  unfinished  busi- 
ness, which  the  Secretary  will  state. 

The  SECRETARY.  A  joint  resolution  (S.  J.  Res.  134)  proposing 
an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  providing 
that  Senators  shall  be  elected  by  the  people  of  the  several  States. 

Mr.  BORAH.  I  ask  unanimous  consent  that  the  unfinished 
business  may  be  temporarily  laid  aside. 

The  PRESIDING  OFFICER.  Is  there  objection  to  the 
request  of  the  Senator  from  Idaho?  The  Chair  hears  none. 
The  unfinished  business  is  temporarily  laid  aside.  The  Senator 
from  Illinois  will  proceed. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  Mr.  President,  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  a  candi- 
date for  re-election  at  the  earnest  request  of  Senato*  Hopkins 
and  the  friends  of  Senator  Hopkins.  They  have  a  rule  in  his 
senatorial  district  that  is  lived  up  to  religiously,  and  always  has 
been  during  the  time  that  candidates  were  nominated  by  dele- 
gate conventions.  A  senator's  term  is  for  four  years,  and  every 
time  a  senator's  term  expires  it  goes  around  to  another  county. 
So  it  was  due  to  go  to  McHenry  county,  in  which  Mr.  Shurtleff 
lived.  A  friend  of  Shurtleff  was  a  candidate  for  senator.  Mr. 
Shurtleff  had  pledged  him  his  support,  and  because  Mr.  Hop- 
kins and  his  friends  knew  that  there  would  be  a  contest  over  the 
election  of  Senator  and  because  they  wanted  well-informed  and 
influential  men  in  the  State  legislature  when  the  senatorial  elec- 
tion was  to  come  up  they  pleaded  with  Mr.  Shurtleff  to  become  a 
candidate.  He  told  them  in  response  that  he  had  given  his  word 
to  support  his  friend  for  senator.  They  immediately  went  to 
this  friend  and  pleaded  with  him  to  go  to  Shurtleff  and  ask  him 
to  become  a  candidate,  which  he  did.  It  was  on  that  request  and 
on  that  release  that  he  became  a  candidate  again  for  the  house. 

As  the  campaign  went  on  much  talk  was  heard  everywhere  as 
to  whether  candidates  would  pay  any  attention  to  the  advisory 
vote.  May  I  not  say  to  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  that  it 
was  generally  the  opinion  of  the  people  in  our  State  that  no 
candidate  would  heed  the  advisory  vote  unless  it  happened  that 
he  had  the  plurality  or  the  majority. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.    Mr.  President 

The  PRESIDING  OFFICER.  Does  the  Senator  from  Illinois 
yield  to  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    I  do. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  I  want  to  understand  the  Senator.  Does 
the  Senator  mean  to  say  that  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  a  supporter  of 
Mr.  Hopkins? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    I  will  come  to  that  in  a  moment,  if  the  Sen- 
ator will  permit  me  to  just  go  along  a  little  further. 
81979—9726 


8 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  Does  the  Senator  mean  to  distinguish  the 
people  of  Illinois  when  he  says  that  all  the  candidates  there  de- 
cided among  themselves  that  they  would  disregard  the  vote  of 
those  people  unless  it  happened  to  be  in  favor  of  the  candidate  ? 

Mr.  LORIMER.  I  mean  to  say  that  the  candidates  did  not 
intend  to  regard  the  primary  vote.  That  is  what  I  mean  to 
say,  and  I  mean  to  prove  that  by  showing  that  every  candidate 
before  the  primary,  whether  he  got  the  majority  or  not,  was 
a  candidate  and  was  voted  for  during  the  session  of  the  general 
assembly  on  almost  every  ballot. 

But  that  is  not  the  point,  Mr.  President.  I  want  to  show 
that  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  a  friend  of  Senator  Hopkins.  He  lived 
in  Senator  Hopkins's  congressional  district.  He  had  been  for 
him  as  the  candidate  for  Congress  for  16  or  18  years.  When 
Mr.  Hopkins  was  elected  to  this  body  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  in  the 
legislature  and  was  one  of  his  campaign  managers  and  voted 
for  him  and  helped  to  elect  him  to  this  body.  But  after 
Mr.  Shurtleff  had  become  a  candidate,  as  I  was  about  to  say, 
all  candidates  were  looking  out  for  themselves  regardless  of 
the  result  of  the  primary  election,  and  in  .order  to  protect 
themselves  Mr.  Hopkins's  friends  went  to  Mr.  Shurtleff  and 
discussed  with  him  the  probability  of  some  other  person  secur- 
ing a  majority  or  a  plurality  in  the  State,  and  they  asked  him 
what  he  would  do  under  those  circumstances.  He  said  that 
he  would  abide  by  the  result  of  the  vote  of  the  Republicans  in 
his  own  legislative  district.  They  asked  him  if  he  would  write  a 
letter  to  that  effect.  He  said  he  would ;  and  he  did  write  the  let- 
ter ;  and  that  was  satisfactory  to  Mr.  Hopkins  and  to  his  friends, 
because  it  was  the  identical  thing  that  they  wanted  him  to  do. 

Then  the  primary  election  came  on.  Mr.  Hopkins  and  his 
friends  were  sure  that  Hopkins  would  get  the  primary  vote  in 
his  congressional  district,  because  he  had  represented  the  dis- 
trict in  Congress  for  many,  many  years.  But  when  the  vote  was 
cast  it  was  learned  that  Mr.  Hopkins  was  beaten  in  the  dis- 
trict by  Congressman  Foss.  When  Mr.  Shurtleff  was  consulted 
about  what  he  would  do,  he  stated  that  he  had  written  a  letter 
declaring  to  his  constituents  what  he  would  do;  that  he  had 
pledged  himself  to  abide  by  the  majority  or  the  plurality  of  his 
district,  and  that  he  intended  to  keep  his  word  and  vote  for 
Mr.  Foss ;  and  he  voted  for  Mr.  Foss  on  every  roll  call  except 
three.  On  two  roll  calls  he  voted  for  Gov.  Deneen,  and  on  one 
roll  call,  the  last,  he  voted  to  elect  me  to  this  body. 

That  is  the  story,  and  it  is  the  everlasting  truth  about  Mr. 
Shurtleff  and  as  to  his  being  a  henchman  of  LORIMER. 

Then,  Mr.  President,  we  go  along  just  a  little  further  in  the 
speech,  and  we  find  this  statement  in  the  remarks  of  the  Sena- 
tor from  South  Dakota  [Mr.  CRAWFORD]  : 

The  next  move  was  to  Install  Lee  O'Neil  Browne  to  the  position  of 
minority  leader  of  the  Democratic  minority  in  the  house. 

Let  us  see  how  near  to  the  facts  that  statement  runs.  Lee 
O'Neil  Browne  was  elected  minority  leader,  and  he  was  elected 
minority  leader  after  a  contest  infinitely  more  bitter  within  the 
lines  of  his  own  party  than  the  .one  in  which  Mr.  Shurtleff  was 
concerned.  Mr.  Tippit,  the  other  candidate  of  the  Democratic 
members  of  the  general  assembly,  was  as  much  opposed  to  Mr. 
Browne's  leadership  as  the  Governor  was  to  Mr.  Shurtleff's 
leadership.  The  fight  had  gone  on  for  many  months,  but  at 
the  end  Mr.^  Browne  was  selected  as  the  leader  of  the  Demo- 
cratic minority. 
81979—9726 


But,  Mr.  President,  not  one  man  of  that  minority  was  ever 
spoken  to  by  me  in  behalf  of  Mr.  Browne  or  anybody  else,  and 
no  man  was  ever  spoken  to  in  behalf  of  Mr.  Browne  through 
anybody  else  for  me. 

The  proof  of  it  is  apparent.  If  you  read  the  journal  of  the 
joint  session  when  I  was  elected  to  this  body  you  will  find 
there  among  the  53  Democrats  that  voted  for  me  the  name  of 
Thomas  Tippit  and  16  of  his  followers.  Suppose  for  an  instant 
I  had  gone  in  with  the  power  it  would  be  made  to  appear,  from 
the  statement  of  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  [Mr.'  CRAW- 
FORD], I  wielded  in  the  Democratic  party,  that  I  had  gone  into 
their  party  affairs,  and  undertaken  to  foist  Mr.  Browne  on  the 
shoulders  of  Mr.  Tippit  and  his  friends,  would  they  have  voted 
to  send  me  to  this  body  after  I  had  been  responsible  for  their  de- 
feat, their  humiliation,  and  their  probable  political  destruction? 

When  one  comes  to  know  all  the  history  of  the  organization 
of  the  house  of  representatives,  he  finds  that  there  was  noth- 
ing in  it  that  would  'justify  the  statement  made  upon  this  floor 
about  my  connection  with  Mr.  Shurtleff's  elevation  to  the 
speakership  and  my  connection  with  Mr.  Browne's  eleva- 
tion to  the  leadership  of  the  minority  of  the  Democratic  party 
in  my  State. 

Labored  efforts  have  been  made  to  show  that  I  organized 
the  legislature  to  defeaj  Gov.  Deneen  and  Senator  Hopkins  in 
their  united  effort  to  return  the  latter  to  the  Senate.  I  desire 
to  call  the  attention  of  the  Senate  to  the  facts.  The  first  ballot 
for  United  States  Senator  was  taken  in  the  separate  branches. 
In  the  senate  Mr.  Hopkins  received  a  majority,  and  in  the 
house  he  received  61  votes  out  of  a  total  of  146.  The  following 
members  of  the  house  belonging  to  and  co-operating  with  the 
Deneen  faction  cast  their  votes  for  candidates  other  than  Sena- 
tor Hopkins: 

Abbey  Church  Hull  Price 

Ap  Madoc  Fulton  Maclean  Reynolds 

Butts  Hagan  Pierson  Sollltt 

The   following   members   of   the   house,   also   of  the   Deneen 
faction,  failed  to  respond  to  their  names  on  the  roll  call : 
Campbell  Scanlan  Ton 

The  presence,  however,  of  these  members  on  the  following 
day,  as  shown  by  the  roll  call,  shows  at  least  that  they  were 
able  to  be  there,  had  they  been  interested  in  securing  the  elec- 
tion of  Senator  Hopkins.  In  proof  of  the  statement  that  the  15 
members  named  above  belonged  to  Gov.  Deneen's  faction,  I 
invite  an  inspection  of  the  journal  of  the  Illinois  House  on  the 
vote  for  the  election  of  speaker,  where  it  win  be  seen  that  they 
voted  for  Edward  J.  King,  the  governor's  candidate.  Had  these 
Deneen  followers  voted  for  Mr.  Hopkins,  he  would  have  received 
a  majority  of  the  votes  of  the  house  as  well  as  of  the  senate, 
and  there  could  have  been  no  deadlock. 

Here  is  the  story  in  figures : 

Total  vote  cast  in  house 146 

Necessary   to  a  choice •  • 74 

Voting  for    Senator   Hopkins 61 

Add   Deneen   votes   indicated    above 15 

Making    a    total    for    Hopkins    of 76 

or  a  majority   of 2 

Now,  Mr.  President  we  come  to  another  very  important  branch 
of  this  discussion.     Take  the  journal  of  the  house,  and  what 
will  you  find  there?     Republican  members  of  the  lower  house 
8X979—9726 


10 

from  the  district  I  live  in  and  with  whom  I  am  supposed  to 
have  influence  voted  for  Mr.  Hopkins,  including  the  senator  from 
the  district.  Every  Republican  member  from  the  congressional 
district  I  represented  voted  for  Senator  Hopkins.  The  record 
will  show  that  Schumacher  and  Kittleman  and  Cruikshank  and 
Ball  and  McNichols,  all  from  my  congressional  district,  voted 
for  Senator  Hopkins. 

Let  me  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  Gov.  Deneen 
is  and  was  the  father  of  the  direct  primary,  and  he  traveled 
from  one  end  of  our  State  to  the  other  urging  upon  the  people 
to  send  members  to  the  general  assembly  to  make  a  direct  pri- 
mary vote  the  law  of  our  State,  and  but  for  him  it  would  not 
be  on  our  statute  books  to-day.  He  used  all  the  arguments 
that  are  used  by  the  direct-primary  advocates  in  favor  of  such 
a  law.  He  was  for  it  and  he  got  it. 

When  the  roll  call  was  had  in  the  separate  branches  of  our 
general  assembly,  the  first  roll  call  on  senatorship,  what  do  we 
find  by  the  journal?  We  find  that  every  single  member  of  that 
general  assembly  from  Gov.  Deneen's  own  legislative  district 
voted  for  some  person  other  than  Senator  Hopkins. 

Senator  Lundberg,  Representative  Church,  and  Representa- 
tive Fulton,  from  Mr.  Deneen's  own  district,  two  from  his  own 
ward  and  his  own  neighborhood,  nominated  through  his  in- 
fluence and  through  the  power  of  his  organization,  voted  against 
Mr.  Hopkins  for  United  States  Senator.  Every  member  of  his 
congressional  district  but  one,  Mr.  Kowalski,  voted  against 
Hopkins,  and  Mr.  Kowalski  changed  his  vote  the  next  day  and 
never  voted  for  him  again.  That  is  the  truth,  and  that  is  what 
the  house  journal  will  demonstrate  to  any  man  who  will  take 
the  time  to  make  an  investigation. 

So,  Mr.  President,  the  simple  statement  of  the  truth  does 
away  with  the  house  organization  by  and  on  the  part  of 
LORIMER  to  elect  himself  Senator  and  to  promote,  as  the  Senator 
from  South  Dakota  [Mr.  CRAWFORD]  says,  dark-lantern  schemes; 
and  that  is  what  becomes  of  the  statement  that  it  was  done  to 
defeat  Senator  Hopkins. 

But  that  is  not  all._  There  were  other  days  on  which  votes 
were  had  for  the  election  of  United  States  Senator. 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  joint  assembly: 

Total  number  of  votes  cast  was 199 

Necessary   to  a  choice 100 

Hopkins  received 80 

Foss    received     16 

Mason  received 6 

Shurtleff    received     12 

Stringer  received 76 

There  were  present  and  voting  on  that  day  for  candidates 
other   than    Senator   Hopkins,    13   members   of  the   general   as- 
sembly, who  were  of  the  Deneen  faction,  viz: 
Senators : 

Hay  Olsen  Schmidt 

Representatives : 

Ap  Madoc  Hagan  Price  Sollitt 

Butts  Kowalski  Reynolds  Ton 

Church  Maclean 

Number  of  votes  cast  for  Hopkins 89 

Add  the  above  named 13 


Necessary    to    a    choice 100 


Hopkins's  majority 
81979—9726 


11 

If  the  13  members  named  above  with  whom  Gov.  Deneen  had 
a  controlling  influence  had  voted  that  day  for  Senator  Hopkins, 
he  would  have  been  elected  on  the  first  kallot  taken  in  the  joint 
assembly  or  on  any  succeeding  ballot  that  day. 

Mr.  President,  that  is  not  only  so  of  that  roll  call,  but  there 
were  five  roll  calls  on  that  day,  and  if  Gov.  Deneen  and  his 
friends  and  the  men  who  were  promoting  or  supposed  to  be 
promoting  the  candidacy  of  Senator  Hopkins  had  voted  for 
him  he  would  have  been  elected  on  any  ballot  on  that  day. 

As  proof  of  this  statement  the  record  will  show  that  the  day 
did  come  when  the  men  to  whom  I  have  referred  did  vote  ex- 
actly as  Gov.  Deneen  wanted  them  to  vote.  That  was  the  day 
of  the  last  roll  call  when  I  was  elected  to  this  body.  Weeks 
before  Gov.  Deneen  had  told  many  of  his  friends  to  help  elect 
me.  They  told  me  so.  I  told  them  I  would  not  accept  their  support 
unless  they  told  the  governor  that  if  they  once  pledged  their  sup- 
port to  me  under  no  conditions  would  they  ever  break  their  word. 

The  day  before  the  roll  call  on  which  I  was  elected  the  gov- 
ernor called  these  men  into  the  mansion  and  into  his  office  and 
told  them  that  LORIMER  must  not  be  elected ;  that  it  would  be 
better  to  have  no  election,  to  allow  nobody  to  be  elected,  and  to 
let  the  legislature  adjourn  without  the  selection  of  a  United 
States  Senator ;  and  these  men  one  after  another  stated  to  him : 
I  have  given  my  word  to  LORIMER  ;  I  will  not  break  It.  If  you  thought 
it  wrong  to  elect  him  you  should  not  have  permitted  me  to  become 
pledged  to  him  with  your  consent. 

These  men  gave  me  their  support  to  the  end. 

Those  of  the  Deneen  faction  who  had  promised  me  their  sup- 
port and  who  broke  their  word  when  the  roll  was  called,  and 
those  the  governor  controlled  who  had  not  promised  to  support 
me,  on  the  final  roll  call  at  the  governor's  suggestion,  supported 
Hopkins.  When  the  time  arrived  that  he  wanted  to  place  them 
either  in  one  column  or  the  other,  they  went  where  the  gov- 
ernor suggested  they  shouid  go.  So,  Mr.  President,  it  was  not  a 
prolonged  fight  to  defeat  Hopkins.  Hopkins  was  beaten  on  the 
first  day.  Hopkins  was  beaten  on  the  second  day.  After  the 
first  session  of  the  joint  assembly  the  question  was  no  more 
about  Hopkins,  but  it  was  who  can,  under  these  conditions,  be 
elected  to  the  United  States  Senate?  That  was  the  question 
from  the  first  day  and  from  the  second  day,  and  then  began  the 
effort  to  «lect  a  United  States  Senator  upon  whom  the  Repub- 
licans could  agree. 

I  talked  with  the  governor  every  week  I  was  in  that  city,  and 
I  urged  for  weeks  and  weeks  that  he  himself  become  the  can- 
didate of  the  party.  I  told  him  I  believed  if  he  would  take 
the  place  our  party,  rent  asunder  with  factional  strife,  would 
be  united.  The  lieutenant  governor  of  our  State  is  the  son 
of  Gov.  Oglesby,  who  had  been  governor  of  our  State  two 
terms  and  served  one  term  in  this  body.  The  name  of  Oglesby 
is  cherished  by  every  citizen  of  Illinois,  I  care  not  the  party  to 
which  he  belongs.  Oglesby  was  nominated  under  a  direct  pri- 
mary wifhout  any  organization.  The  governor  was  against  him 
and  all  the  governor's  organization  was  opposed  to  him.  Ex- 
Gov.  Yates  was  a  candidate  for  governor  and  his  friends  opposed 
Oglesby.  The  result  of  it  reminds  me  of  a  statement  that  I 
heard  former  Senator  Mason  make  to  a  large  mass  meetmg  in 
Springfield  immediately  after  McKinley  was  nominated  for 
President.  He  said: 
81079 — 9726 


12 

All  the  politicians  were  against  McKinley  ;  all  the  men  who  have 
influence  were  against  him ;  theje  was  nobody  for  him  but  the  people. 

Oglesby  was  nominated  by  the  people  of  the  State  without 
the  support  of  any  faction,  and  I  believed,  and  Other  Republicans 
believed,  that  if  Deneen  was  elected  to  this  body  and  Oglesby 
became  the  governor,  that  he  would  unite  the  party  and  harmon- 
ize the  differences  of  the  factions,  and  we  would  be  able  to  go 
to  the  polls  with  a  solid  front  in  the  future  as  we  had  done  in 
the  past  in  our  State. 

I  talked  with  the  governor  and  labored  with  him  until  long 
about  the  15th  of  March.  About  that  time  he  said  he  felt  that 
he  could  not  take  the  place,  but  he  led  me  to  believe  that,  if  the 
party  could  be  united  upon  him,  he  would  take  the  place.  I 
asked  him  to  send  for  the  chairman  or  the  State  central  com- 
mittee, Mr.  West,  his  close  friend,  so  that  we  might  discuss  the 
matter.  Mr.  West  came  to  Springfield  and  the  Republicans 
consulted  about  the  advisability  of  electing  the  governor. 
Enough  of  them  pledged  themselves  to  support  him  to  make  his 
election  assured.  On  that  night  at  about  11  o'clock,  after  I  had 
understood  from  Mr.  West  that  the  governor  would  be  a  candi- 
date, Mr.  West  came  to  the  hotel  at  which  I  was  stopping  and 
said  that  the  governor  would  not  be  a  candidate. 

From  the  day  that  Senator  Hopkins  was  defeated  until  the 
23d  clay  of  March,  when  Mr.  Deneen  refused  positively  to  be  a 
candidate,  we  were  endeavoring  to  secure  the  election  of  Deneen, 
and  not  LORIMER,  as  United  States  Senator. 

When  the  governor  refused  to  be  a  candidate,  I  consulted  him 
about  many  other  men,  and  among  them  Mr.  Foss,  who  was 
voted  for  every  day.  Then  I  talked  with  him  about  Col. 
LOWDEN,  a  Member  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Repre- 
sentative McKiNLEY,  and  Representative  RODENBERG,  but  before 
I  came  to  discuss  any  of  these  names  I  urged  upon  him  the 
name  of  Edward  Shurtleff,  the  speaker  of  the  Illinois  House  of 
Representatives.  His  name  was  discussed  not  by  the  governor 
and  myself  alone,  but  by  the  governor  and  his  friends — his 
newspaper  friends,  and  they  are  all-powerful  and  absolutely 
controlling  with  him.  Mr.  Noyes,  who  was  then  the  editor  of 
the  Record-Herald,  said  that  he  would  not  agree  to  Mr.  Shurt- 
leff's  election.  Mr.  Noyes  is  now  president  of  the  Star  Com- 
pany in  the  city  of  Washington,  where  Senators  can  easily  reach 
him  and  verify  this  statement.  For  about  three  weeks  we  were 
trying  to  elect  Shurtleff. 

Then  came  the  discussion  on  this  other  set  of  men,  and  it 
was  not  until  it  had  become  apparent  that  the  governor  would 
not  support  any  of  those  men  that  at  his  urgent  suggestion  I  con- 
sidered the  advisability  of  becoming  a  candidate.  This  same 
Mr.  Noyes  was  interviewed  by  my  friend  Mr.  Shanahan,  who 
was  a  member  of  the  legislature.  Mr.  Noyes  said  he  had  no 
objection  to  Mr.  Deneen  joining  to  elect  LORIMER  to  the  Senate, 
but  that  he  personally  could  not  declare  in  his  favor;  that  he 
had  fought  him  for  so  many  years  that  he  could  not  turn  in 
one  night  and  support  him,  but  that  he  did  believe — and  he  did 
tell  this  to  Mr.  Shanahan — that  Mr.  LORIMER  was  the  only  Re- 
publican in  Illinois  who  could  afford  to  be  elected  by  the  aid  of 
Democratic  votes;  that  it  would  not  injure  him  politically  to 
receive  the  support  of  Democrats,  because  he  had  been  elected 
to  the  House  time  after  time  from  a  Democratic  district  by  the 
aid  of  Democratic  votes ;  that  everybody  would  concede  that 
81979—9726 


LORIMER  could  be  elected  v  ::iiout  injury  to  himself  or  to  the 
party  politically;  and  if  Mr.  Deneen  wanted  to  join  with  him 
he  had  no  objection. 

Mr.  President,  that  is  the  statement  of  fact ;  that  is  the 
true  history  of  the  senatorial  election  in  the  State  of  Illinois 
up  to  this  point.  Does  that  show  that  months  before  the  legis- 
lature convened  I  was  conjuring  up  in  my  mind  a  plot  by 
which  I  could  elect  my  "henchman"  as  speaker  of  the  general 
assembly,  and,  through  the  power  of  that  office,  foist  myself 
onto  that  general  assembly  and  place  myself  in  this  body?  If 
that  truth  demonstrates  that  theory,  then  I  have  nothing  more 
to  say. 

Then  we  come  to  another  important  question  in  this  dis- 
cussion. 

The  investigation — 

Said  the  Senator  from  Hew  York  [Mr.  ROOT] — 

The  investigation  concerns  itself  with  the  way  in  which  those  108 
votes  were  procured.  It  is  practically  concentrated  upon  the  way  in 
which  the  53  Democratic  votes  were  secured,  because  it  was 'a  matter 
for  special  inquiry  that  53  Democrats  should  leave  the  candidate  of 
their  own  primary  and  unite  upon  a  candidate  of  the  opposite  party. 

If  this  were  the  only  case  of  the  kind  in  history,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, Senators  might  inquire  why  Democrats  voted  for  LORIMER, 
but  history  is  teeming  with  testimony  to  the  effect  that  men 
have  been  elected  to  this  body  by  votes  of  the  opposite  party. 

But  here  we  come,  it  strikes  me,  to  a  point  where  the  question 
arises  how  it  was  that  53  Democrats  voted  for  LORIMER.  It  is 
not  a  very  long  story,  or  it  is  a  long  story,  according  to  the 
way  it  is  told,  but  I  shall  not  test  the  patience  of  the  Senate 
by  going  into  a  detailed  history  of  the  things  that  brought 
about  this  condition.  I  shall,  however,  ask  a  little  time  of 
the  Senate  to  answer  the  question  of  the  Senator  from  New 
York. 

When  I  first  became  a  Member  of  Congress  in  1895  I  made 
up  my  mind  that  I  should  try  to  do  something  more  than  vote 
for  appropriation  bills  in  return  for  what  the  people  had  done 
for  me.  I  lived  in  and  represented  the  district  in  which  is 
located  the  great  Chicago  Drainage  Canal,  which  is  intended 
ultimately  to  be  a  portion  of  a  great  waterway  to  be  estab- 
lished between  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  I 
have  been  urging  upon  Congress  during  my  service  the  im- 
portance of  such  an  improvement,  and  I  think  the  Senator  from 
Ohio  [Mr.  BURTON],  who  was  chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Rivers  and  Harbors  in  the  House,  will  bear  me  out  in  the 
statement  that  I  was  constantly  at  work  trying  to  secure  the 
attention  and  the  aid  of  Congress  for  that  development,  and 
that  I  was  largely  responsible  for  all  the  appropriations  that 
were  made  for  the  surveys  of  that  project.  I  found  that  it  was 
going  to  cost  a  great  deal  of  money,  the  expenditure  of  vast 
millions  of  dollars,  and  that  more  than  the  effort  and  more  than 
the  voice  of  one  man  would  be  required  to  secure  the  money 
requisite  to  make  the  improvement.  After  many  years  ef  per- 
sonal effort  I  decided  that  if  the  improvement  was  worth  while, 
and  the  people  of  the  valley  came  to  know  that  it  could  be 
made,  and  if  it  were  worth  enough  to  them  to  have  it  made,  if 
they  were  informed  on  the  subject,  they  would  support  a  move- 
ment to  make  the  improvement.  So  I  built  a  little  boat — I 
think  it  was  in  1904 — only  about  26  feet  long,  for  the  express 
81979—9726 


1' 

purpose  of  organizing  the  Mississippi  Valley  for  that  project 
One  day,  with  four  of  my  colleagues  from  Illinois,  and  my  two 
sons  to  operate  the  boat — I  will  pause  just  a  moment  to  say  that 
of  these  four  Members  of  the  House,  the  only  Democrat  in  that 
body  from  that  State,  HENRY  RAINEY,  was  one  of  that  number — 
we  began  our  trip  from  Lake  Michigan  to  the  Gulf.  We  stopped 
at  almost  every  town  along  the  Illinois  and  the  Mississippi 
Rivers,  discussing  the  matter  with  the  people,  organizing  in 
every  one  of  the  places  where  we  stopped  a  Lakes-to-the-Gulf 
deep  waterway  association.  As  we  passed  down  through  the 
valley  one  Member  for  one  reason  and  another  Member  for 
another  went  back  home,  and  we  filled  his  place  with  a  'Mem- 
ber that  we  picked  up  along  the  route.  When  we  left  Chicago 
we  had  on  board  of  Members  of  the  other  House,  four  Republic- 
ans and  one  Democrat,  Mr.  RAINEY,  and  when  we  landed  in 
New  Orleans  we  had  on  board  four  Democrats  and  one  Re- 
publican. 

So  the  work  of  organizing  this  association  was  divided  equally 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  among  Democrats  and  Republi- 
cans, no  man  and  no  party  seeking  to  take  advantage  over  the 
other.  Out  of  these  organizations  we  formed  a  central  organ- 
ization, held  our  first  convention  in  St.  Louis,  and  there  per- 
fected a  permanent  Lakes-to-the-Gulf  Deep  Waterway  Associa- 
tion. The  following  year  we  accompanied  President  Roosevelt 
down  the  Mississippi  Riverain  the  interest  of  this  project  to  the 
great  city  of  Memphis,  all  the  people  turning  out  to  make  a 
holiday. 

In  the  next  convention,  at  Chicago,  attended  by  over  4,000 
delegates  from  the  valley,  we  had  upon  the  platform  in  the 
Auditorium,  speaking  in  favor  of  this  project,  the  Democratic 
and  the  Republican  candidates  for  the  Presidency — Mr.  Bryan 
and  Mt.  Taft,  our  President  to-day. 

After  the  convention  at  Memphis  I  went  back  home  to  my 
State.  Some  question  had  been  raided  in  the  House  as  to 
whether  the  Federal  Government  should  make  the  improvement 
between  Lockport  and  Utica,  in  the  Illinois  valley,  a  distance 
of  about  60  miles.  The  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Rivers 
and  Harbors  raised  'that  question,  and  it  seemed  apparent  that 
•unless  that  portion,  of  the  work  was  done  by  the  people  of 
Illinois,  in  addition  to  the  other  40  miles  which  they  had  built 
at  a  cost  of  over  $60,000,000,  it  would  be  impossible  to  get  this 
work  under  way.  So  I  went  back  home  to  my  own  State 
where  our  legislature  was  in  session.  I  proposed  to  them  that 
they  submit  a  constitutional  amendment  to  the  people  authoriz- 
ing an  expenditure  of  $20,000,000  to  do  that  work.  Here  [exhibit- 
ing] is  a  copy  of  the  document  containing  the  arguments  that 
were  made,  running  over  a  period  of  several  weeks. 

After  the  discussion  was  completed,  the  general  assembly 
unanimously,  every  Democrat  and  every  Republican  favoring  it, 
voted  to  submit  a  constitutional  amendment  to  the  people  of 
our  State  to  decide  whether  or  not  $20,000,000  should  be  ex- 
pended for  the  purpose  I  have  indicated.  I  remember  that, 
when  I  was  discussing"  the  subject  before  the  general  assembly, 
one  gentleman  asked  me  what  I  thought  the  people  would  do 
about  the  question?  I  told  him  if  they  passed  the  resolution 
and  submitted  it  to  the  people,  and  nothing  more  was'  done,  the 
people  would  not  adopt  the  constitutional  amendment,  for  few 
of  them  knew  anything  about  it  and  a  lesser  number  knew  ahy- 
81979—0726 


15 

thing  of  the  benefits  that  would  come  to  the  State  by  the  devel- 
opment of  this  great  waterway.  I  pledged  them  there  that  if 
they  would  submit  the  amendment  to  the  people  I  would  go 
myself  in(to  every  part  of  our  state,  explain  the  benefits  to  come 
to  the  people,  and  trust  to  them  to  vote  an  approval. 

The  legislature  submitted  the  constitutional  amendment,  and 
I  immediately  began  the  work  of  organizing  the  citizens  of  our 
State  in  favor  of  the  project.  This  work  was  not  confined  to 
Republicans ;  it  was  not  confined  to  Democrats ;  it  was  not  con- 
fined to  Socialists ;  it  was  not  confined  to  Prohibitionists ;  it 
was  taken  even  to  the  homes  of  men  who  believed  in  no  party. 
We  organized  every  precinct  in  Illinois  outside  of  the  city  of 
Chicago  by  getting  people  who  were  interested  in  the  .progress 
of  our  State — Democrats  and,  Republicans  and  members  of  other 
parties  alike.  Whepever  a  county  or  a  town  was  made  up  over- 
whelmingly of  Republicans  we  installed  a  Democrat  for  presi- 
dent of  the  association,  and  where  it  was  overwhelmingly  Demo- 
cratic we  installed  a  Republican  for  president  of  the  associa- 
tion ;  so  that  every  man  with  whom  we  talked  and  worlced  was 
impressed  with  the  non-partisan  character  of  this  movement  in 
our  State. 

I  traveled  from  one  end  of  Illinois  to  the  other,  speaking 
once,  twice,  three  times  a  day,  all  the  way  from  two  hours  a 
day  to  five  hours  a  day,  interesting  the  people  in  this  project. 
At  the  end  of  the  campaign  in  September,  1908,  the  work  had 
been  so  exhausting  that  I  was  not  able  to  say  even  one  word 
in  my  Congressional  district  during  that  campaign,  and  I  had 
naught  to  do  with  rny  election  to  Congress  the  last  time. 

Would  you  know  the  character  of  people  who  were  inter- 
ested in  the  movement?  We  interested  the  best  men  of  the 
State.  Whe'n  we  went  to  Bloofningten,  a  town  in  a  county  that 
is  overwhelmingly  Republican,  we  had  as  our  presiding  officer 
and  the  head  of  our  organization  there  a  geatleman  who  once 
graced  the  chair  as  president  of  this  body— Atilai  E.  Stevenson, 
a  Democrat.  It  was  that  olass  of  men  that  were  interested  in 
this  work.  I  traveled  from  county  to  county  with  Hon.  HENRY 
RAINEY,  spoke  from  the  same  platform  with  him  day  after 
day,  and  in  every  place  a  Republican  speaker  'was  supplemented 
by  some  leading  Democrat,  either  sfrom  that  community  or  from 
some  other  community  in  the  State. 

Mr.  President,  I  want  to  call  attention  to  the  roster  of  that 
organization.  There  it  ?s  (-exhibiting),  50,000  Democrats  and 
Republicans,  about  evenly  divided,  in  the  precincts  outside  of 
the  city  of  Chicago. 

When  the  campaign  for  the  waterway  amendment  was  over 
and  the  vote  was  had,  the  people  announced  what  they  thought 
of  it.  That  vote  was  cast  on  the  same  day  that  the  President 
was  elected  and  on  the  same  day  that  the  governor  was  elected. 
The  vote  cast  for  governor  was  approximately  1,079,000;  the 
vote  cast  for  President  was  approximately  1^080,000;  the 
vote  cast  for  the  constitutional  amendment  for  trie  deep  water- 
way was  approximately  887,000.  The  plurality  that  Governor 
Deneen  received  was  approximately  23,000;  the  plurality  .that 
President  T»ft  received  was  approximately  179,000;  but  the 
majority  for  the  constittitional  amendment  was  approximately 
497,000,  almost  a  half  million  rhajority,  showing  fiOw  the  people 
of  Illinois,  men  of  all  parties,  took  upon  this  question. 
81979—9726 


16 
Result  of  election. 


Vote. 

Plurality. 

For  governor  : 
Deneen    

550,076 

Stevenson  

526,912 

For  Presiden  t  : 
Taft   

1,079,988 
6°9  932 

23,164 

Bryan    

450*810 

Amendment  to  constitution  : 
For    

1,080,742 
629  522 

179,122 

Against    

195  177 

887,699 

497,345 

Mr.  President,  that  was  the  result  of  the  work  of  over 
years  for  this  improvement.  It  was  accomplished  just  exactly 
as  I  have  stated  to  you,  by  the  aid  of  all  of  the  people  of  the 
State,  regardless  of  party  and  regardless  of  any  partisanship. 
That  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  was  able  to  secure  Democratic 
votes,  as  I  shall  show  to  you  later. 
The  Senator  from  New  York  [Mr.  ROOT]  further  said': 
Now,  there  are  certain  undisputed  facts  which  bear  upon  this  inquiry 
as  to  these  53  Democratic  votes.  The  first  which  I  ask  you  to  con- 
sider is  that  Mr.  LOKIMBB  was  present  at  Springfield  and  in  attendance 
at  the  State  capital  at  the  time  of  this  election,  and  he  had  been  there 
for  several  weeks. 

The  Senator  wants  you  to  know  that  when  I  was  elected  to 
this  body  I  was  present  at  the  capital  of  Illinois  and  had  been 
there  for  several  weeks.  Yes,  Mr.  President,  I  had  been  there 
for  several  weeks,  and  all  the  time  that  I  could  spare  from  my 
duties  in  the  other  branch  of  Congress  during  the  session  of 
the  legislature,  after  its  organization  was  perfected,  I  put  in 
at  Springfield,  and  I  was  there  when  I  was  elected,  and  I  was 
there  to  render  effective  the  work  done  when  the  constitutional 
amendment  was  submitted  to  the  people — to  urge  the  general 
assembly  to  pass  a  bill  to  carry  out  the  purposes  of  that  amend- 
ment, to  provide  for  an  organization  through  which  this 
work  could  be  done  and  this  $20,000,000  expended.  There 
was  a  difference  between  the  governor  and  myself  on  that  ques- 
tion. 

I  had  pledged  the  people  that  in  so  far  as  I  had  influence 
not  one  dollar  of  the  twenty  million  should  be  spent  until  Con- 
gress agreed  to  co-operate  with  our  State  and  appropriated  the 
money  requisite  to  finish  the  project  from  the  Lakes  to  the  Gulf. 
We  had  much  discussion  on  that  question.  I  told  the  governor 
that  I  would  support,  with  all  the  influence  I  had,  a  bill  to  give 
him  absolute  control  of  the  work;  to  place  the  appointment 
of  all  the  officials  in  his  hands  for  the  expenditure  of  the 
$20,000,000;  and  that  the  only  thing  I  exacted,  in  so  far  as  I 
was  concerned,  was  that  the  money  should  not  be  spent  until 
Congress  authorized  the  Federal  Government  to  co-operate  with 
our  State. 

He  wanted  tV>e  money  to  be  spent   for  the  development  of 

water  power.     We  disagreed,  and  the  contest  went  on  until  the 

last  day  of  the  session,  when  it  became  known  that  no  bill  could 

be  passed  because  the  adherents  of  one  policy  were  not  strong 

81979 — 9726 


17 

enough  to  pass  it  and  those  of  the  other  policy  would  not  yield 
a  peg.  So.  Mr.  President,  I  was  in  Springfield  as  I  have  been 
many,  many  times  before. 

I  should  like  to  know  from  the  Senator  from  New  York  if  he 
has  ever  been  identified  with  a  work  of  this  kind,  if  he  has 
ever  come  in  contact  with  his  Democratic  brethren  and  worked 
with  them  in  season  and  out  of  season  for  a  project  that  would 
r.ot  benefit  them  alone,  but  would  benefit  the  whole  people  of 
his  State?  If  he  has  been  connected  with  such  a  work,  will  he 
tell  me,  or  will  he  tell  anybody,  that  when  he  was  doing  that 
work  he  was  not  making  friends  among  the  people  of  his  State 
regardless  of  their  party  affiliations? 

But  there  is,  Mr.  President,  an  abundance  of  evidence  here 
to  show  that  work  in  favor  of  things  that  help  a  great  State  is 
appreciated  by  the  people  who  receive  the  benefit  of  the  effort, 
and  I  have  here  a  list  of  Democrats  who  voted  for  me  on  ac- 
count of  the  fact  that  they  felt  I  had  been  doing  something, 
that  I  had  been  helping  in  a  work  that  meant  much  to  Illinois, 
and  that  if  they  promoted  me  to  a  seat  where  I  would  be  secure 
for  four  or  six  years  this  improvement  would  ultimately  be 
made. 

I  mention  as  the  first  Democrat  Senator  Hearn.  Oh,  if  there 
be  a  Democrat  in  Illinois,  surely  Senator  Hearn  is  that  man. 
He  had  service  as  captain  of  Company  G  of  the  Fifth  Missouri 
Infantry,  in  Cockrell's  brigade,  a  Confederate  general,  and  he 
served  through  the  war  as  a  Confederate  soldier.  If  you 
think  he  is  not  a  Democrat  go  and  talk  with  him.  He  was  one 
of  the  men  who  was  in  the  forefront  of  this  work.  He  aided 
in  every  way  that  he  could  to  pass  the  proposed  amendment 
in  the  house.  At  that  time  he  was  in  service  in  that  body.  He 
•worked  throughout  his  district  with  me  and  with  others.  But 
the  thing  above  all  things  that  I  am  confident  caused  Senator 
Hearn  to  vote  for  me  was  not  alone  that  I  was  for  this  project, 
hut  because  he  became  convinced  that  I  was  not  trying  to  get 
advantage  over  any  Democrat. 

He  was  fond  of  Congressman  RAINEY,  and  he  knew  that  I  had 
never  taken  a  step  in  this  work  from  the  time  we  began  the 
organization  until  he  voted  for  me,  until  I  had  consulted  with 
Congressman  RAINEY.  He  was  really  the  leading  Democrat 
in  my  State  in  this  work,  and  it  was  because  of  the  work  and 
because  of  the  fact  that  I  was  not  trying  to  get  advantage  and 
because  I  did  what  was  in  my  power  to  put  a  Democrat  in  the 
forefront  of  the  work,  that  he  voted  for  me. 

A  few  days  before  the  vote  was  taken  he  came  to  me  and 
told  me  all  these  things  and  he  said:  "LORIMER,  I  would  like  to 
vote  for  you.  but  I  wish  you  would  give  me  an  additional  reason 
for  doing  it."  I  asked  him  what  request  he  had  to  make.  He 
said,  "If  you  could  only  go  back  to  Washington  as  a  Senator, 
and  join  with  the  Democrats  and  just  cast  one  vote  with  .them 
on  the  tariff  bill,  my  conscience  would  feel  easier,  if  I  had 
voted  for  you."  [Laughter.] 

I  said  to  him :  "Senator,  much  as  I  appreciate  the  dignity  of 
that  office,  if  I  can  not  go  there  and  vote  with  the  Republicans, 
the  stalwart  Republicans.  I  do  not  want  a  seat  in  the  United 
States  Senate."  [Applause  in  the  galleries.] 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT.    No  applause  is  permissible  by  oc- 
cupants in  the  gallery. 
81979 — 9726 2 


18 

Mr.  LORIMER.  Senator  Hearn  said,  "Well,  I  guess  I  will 
have  to  vote  for  you  anyhow."  Then  he  went*  away,  and  when 
the  roll  was  called  he  responded,  and  I  received  his  vote. 

In  the  campaign  it  happened  that  I  talked  at  the  home  of 
Representative  Blair,  who  voted  for  the  constitutional  amend- 
ment, and  he  had  heard  me  talk  about  it  before  the  general  as- 
sembly. To  make  this  campaign  I  had  large  maps  made  to 
illustrate  the  work,  and  after  I  had  finished  my  talk  before  the 
people  in  his  town,  and  the  meeting  had  adjourned  he  came  to 
me  and  said,  "LORIMER,  if  you  keep  up  that  work  you  will  be 
governor  of  Illinois,  and  when  that  day  comes  I  will  vote  for 
you.  That  was  the  way  that  Democrat  felt  about  the  work 
for  the  waterway. 

Then  I  went  from  there  over  to  Franklin  county,  and  I  talked 
in  the  courthouse  on  this  subject  there,  and  when  the  meeting 
adjourned  a  great  tall,  fine  looking  gentleman  came  up  to  me, 
took  me  by  the  hand,  and  laying  one  hand  on  my  shoulder 
said :  "Mr.  LORIMER,  keep  up  that  work.  It  has  merit ;  the 
people  will  come  to  understand  it  after  awhile,  and  this  im- 
provement will  be  made,  and  it  will  make  you" — he  was 
very  enthusiastic — "governor,  or  it  will  make  you  Senator,  or 
it  will  make  you  President  of  the  United  States;  and  when  the 
time  comes,  and  I  am  alive  and  I  have  the  opportunity,  you 
will  get  my  vote." 

At  that  time  he  had  no  idea  of  going  to  the  legislature.  But 
he  was  nominated  by  his  party,  and  he  was  elected  by  his 
party,  and  when  on  the  roll  call  the  name  of  Sidney  Espy  was 
called  Sidney  Espy  cast  his  vote  for  me;  and  there  was  no  man 
in  Springfield,  and  there  is  no  man  in  -Illinois,  whether  he  be 
Democrat  or  Republican,  who  is  a  warmer  and  closer  and  more 
enthusiastic  friend  of  mine  than  Sidney  Espy,  and  for  no  other 
reason  except  the  one  I  have  explained. 

Now  we  come  to  another  name — Mr.  Gorman,  who  lives  in 
Peoria,  another  Democrat.  When  they  began  discussing  the 
election  of  LORIMER,  many  of  the  influential  people  of  his  town 
came  to  Springfield — Democrats  and  Republicans  alike.  Peoria 
is  on  the  Illinois  river,  and  its  people  believe  that  the  improved 
waterway  will  redound  greatly  to  the  benefit  of  their  great  city. 
The  Democratic  ex-mayor,  the  leader  of  the  Democratic  organ- 
ization, was  among  the  men.  I  had  never  seen  Mayor  O'Connor 
in  my  life  until  he  came  to  Springfield.  Those  men  urged  their 
members  of  the  legislature — Democrats  and  Republicans — to 
vote  and  work  for  LORIMER,  with  the  result  that  I  secured  Gor- 
man's vote,  the  Democrat,  the  vote  of  Black,  Republican,  and 
the  vote  of  Butts,  Republican,  who  had  also  been  urged  by  Mr. 
Kenney,  at  the  suggestion  of  Gov.  Deneen.  The  Republican  sen- 
ator came  to  me  before  the  roll  was  called  and  he  said :  "LORI- 
MER, I  wish  I  were  free  to  vote  for  you."  Senator  Dailey 
further  said:  "The  people  of  my  city  want  me  to  vote  for  you, 
but  -I  can  not  do  it  because  I  am  chairman  of  Senator  Hop- 
kins's" — either  his  executive  committee  or  his  staering  commit- 
tee— "and  I  can  not  on  that  account  vote  for  you.  But  T  wish 
you  godspeed."  There  is  where  the  vote  of  Gorman  came  from. 

Michael  Link — you  have  heard  much  talk  about  Michael  Link 
here,  one  of  the  men  who  it  has  been  said  was  bribed  to  vote  for 
me.  When  I  made  the  campaign  in  his  senatorial  district  in 
Madison  county,  where  I  talked  every  night  to  large  crowds  of 
people,  Michael  Link  was  on  the  platiorm  with  me,  and  I  had 
81979—9726 


19 

there  with  me  also  the  Republican  members  of  the  legislature, 
and  I  told  the  people  of  their  district  that  if  this  improvement 
should  be  made  they  would  owe  as  much  to  these  men,  including 
Link,  as  to  anybody  else  in  the  country.  Madison  county  fronts 
on  the  river,  and  every  man,  woman  and  child  in  the  district  is 
for  the  improvement  and  anxious  that  this  work  shall  be  done. 

Then  the  next  one  I  come  to  in  the  waterway  group  is  Repre- 
sentative Riley,  a  stanch  old  Democrat.  I  doubt  if  he  ever  voted 
for  a  Republican  in  his  life,  even  for  'supervisor  of  his  township. 
But  if  there  be  a  father  of  the  waterway  from  the  Lakes  to  the 
Gulf  it  is  Representative  Riley.  Years  ago  the  people  from  our 
city  went  to  the  legislature  to  have  the  bill  authorizing  the  con- 
struction of  the  canal  passed.  The  mayor  and  many  of  our 
leading  citizens  spent  several  weeks  there  discussing  the  project. 
The  legislature  defeated  their  bill,  and  when  they  were  gone  Mr. 
Lyman  E.  Cooley,  the  engineer,  and  Mr.  Riley  took  up  the  bill 
together,  and  at  the  end  of  several  months  Mr.  Riley's  bill  be- 
came a  law.  The  channel — 160  feet  wide  in  the  rock  and  24  feet 
deep — built  from  Chicago  to  Joliet,  is  the  result  of  the  work  of 
Representative  Riley. 

He  was  in  the  last  legislature;  I  had  worked  with  him  in 
season  and  out  of  season ;  and  if  there  be  anything  on  earth  that 
would  make  Riley  leave  his  party  (and  I  am  sure  it  is  the  only 
thing  in  the  world  he  would  leave  it  for)  would  be  for  the  con- 
struction of  a  waterway  from  the  Great  Lakes' to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  He  was  not  only  in  this  work,  but  more  than  20  years 
ago  he  was  the  leader  and  the  father  of  it  all,  and  championed  it 
and  made  it  what  it  is. 

Mr.  Staymates  is  another  Democrat;  a  man  whose  honesty 
no  man  on  earth,  who  ever  knew  him,  would  impugn ;  a  man 
who  has  devoted  his  time  from  the  day  we  adopted  the  con- 
stitutional amendment  up  to  this  time  in  writing  for  all  the 
papers  that  would  take  his  copy  on  this  subject;  and  he  voted 
for  me  on  that  account. 

We  come  to  Henry  Shephard.  What  about  Henry  Shephard? 
When  the  congressional  party  came  back  to  Washington  from 
New  Orleans  at  the  opening  of  Congress,  I  called  a  meeting  of 
the  men  who  had  made  the  trips  and  we  organized  among  the 
Members  of  Congress  an  association.  When  I  notified  Mr. 
RAINEY,  he  told  me  that  he  could  not  attend  that  night  because 
his  friend,  Henry  Shephard,  was  in  town.  I  invited  Henry 
Shephard  to  come  to  that  little  dinner  where  we  organized,  and 
it  was  there  that  I  first  met  Henry  Shephard.  It  was  there 
that  he  first  became  interested  in  this  work.  It  was  at  that 
time  that  a  friend«hip  grew  uo  between  him  and  me  that  has 
lasted  until  to-day.  Henry  Shephard  was  a  member  of  the 
legislature,  and  he  was  for  this  proposition  all  the  way  through. 

The  Senator  asks  why  I  was  at  Springfield  when  I  was 
elected  to  the  Senate.  The  Senator  says  that  I  was  there  for 
several  weeks  before  I  was  elected  to  the  Senate.  Suppose  I 
had  no  business  there  in  favor  of  this  waterway;  suppose  I 
had  never  had  any  interest  in  the  development  of  my  State  and 
that  the  only  thing  I  cared  about  was  to  get  office  for  myself ; 
suppose  I  had  organized  the  legislature  to  elect  myself  to  the 
Senate;  and  then  suppose  that  for  no  other  purpose,  except  to 
promote  my  election,  I  was  in  Spririgfield  for  sev.eral  weeks  be- 
fore I  was  elected;  then,  what  of  that?  Is  that  proof  of 
bribery?  Is  that  evidence  of  corrupt  practices,  that  a  man  who 
81979—9726 


20 

is  a  candidate  for  office  should  go  to  those  who  have  the  votes 
with  which  he  can  secure  office  and  tell  them  he  wants  their 
votes  and  ask  them  to  be  for  him?  Is  that  an  evidence  of 
corruption  and  bribery? 

Great  stress  is  laid  on  the  fact  that  I  was  in  Springfield.  Has 
any  Senator  here  ever  been  in  Springfield  or  has  any  Senator 
here  ever  been  at  the  capital  of  his  State  when  they  were  dis- 
cussing his  election  to  this  body?  Is  it  a  crime  to  be  there? 
If  it  is,  Mr.  President,  then  I  am  guilty  of  that  crime;  I  am 
guilty  of  being  in  Springfield ;  but  it  has  always  struck  me  that 
if  a  man  wanted  votes  for  United  States  Senator,  wanted  the 
support  of  his  own  legislature,  and  wanted  a  seat  in  this  body, 
he  had  a  right  to  go  where  the  votes  are;  that  he  had  a  right 
to  talk  to  the  members  of  the  legislature;  and  that  if  he  did  go 
there  and  if  he  did  talk  to  the  members  of  the  legislature  it  was 
not  evidence  of  bribery  or  corruption. 

Mr.  President,  it  is  the  talk  of  a  child.  No  man  who  has  ever 
had  any  experience  in  politics  will  pay  any  attention  to  a  state- 
ment of  that  sort. 

During  the  time  that  I  have  been  actively  identified  with  poli- 
tics in  my  State,  every  time  a  Senator  was  elected,  sometimes 
during  the  campaign  for  his  election  and  frequently  on  the  day 
he  was  elected,  he  was  present  in  the  capitol  at  Springfield.  I 
have  only  to  recall  the  memorable  fight  in  1885,  when  the  legis- 
lature was  in  a  deadlock.  The  Democrats  had  one-half  of  the 
strength  of  the  body  and  the  Republicans  had  the  other.  Gen. 
Logan  had  a  seat  in  this  body  at  that  time,  and  he  was  a 
candidate  for  re-election.  From  the  day  the  members  of  the 
general  assembly  began  TO  assemble  in  Springfield,  before  the 
house  or  the  senate  was  organized,  Gen.  Logan  was  on  the 
ground.  He  was  there  talking  to  the  members  of  the  general 
assembly,  and  he  was  there  during  the  whole  winter,  until  the 
springtime,  when  he  was  finally  returned  to  this  body. 

Did  anybody  cast  suspicion  upon  Gen.  Logan  because  he  was 
present  at  the  capital  weeks  before  he  was  returned  to  this 
body?  Not  at  all;  and  nobody  ever  thought  of  such  a  thing. 

The  only  purpose,  Mr.  President,  that  there  can  be  in  throw- 
ing this  seeming  cloud  of  suspicion  over  this  election  is  in 
order  that  Senators  may  believe  I  was  not  only  elected  to  this 
body  by  bribery  and  corruption,  but  that  I  was  present  there 
and  knew  it  was  going  on  and  was  sanctioning  that  sort  of 
thing.  Any  man  who  knows  anything  about  that  contest  knows 
that  the  contrary  is  the  fact  in  the  case. 

Now,  we  come  to  another  set  of  Democrats  who  voted  for 
LORIMEK,  the  anti-Hopkins  Democrats.  There  was  present  in 
that  general  assembly  Representative  George  Alschuler,  and 
he  voted  for  LORIMER.  George  Alschuler  lives  in  Hopkins's 
home  town;  he  is  his  neighbor.  May  I  say,  in  passing,  that 
while  he  voted  for  LORIMER — and  the  brand  of  condemnation 
is  asked  for  those  who  did  vote  for  LORIMER — he  was  re-elected 
to  the  general  assembly  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  and  he 
was  elected  leader  of  the  minority,  and  he  is  now  the  minority 
leader  of  that  body.  He  voted  for  me,  I  may  say,  because 
he  was  friendly;  but  that  would  not  be  sufficient  reason.  He 
voted  for  me  because  he  was  opposed  to  the  election  of  Hopkins, 
and  he  announced  it  to  everybody.  There  was  not  one  man 
in  Springfield  who  knew  anything  about  the  election  but  knew 
that  George  Alschuler  would  vote  for  any  Republican  or  any 
81979—9726 


21 

man  of  any  other  party  in  order  to  defeat  Senator  Hopkins.  It 
was  not -a  LORIMER  vote;  he  belongs  to  nobody;  but  he  was 
against  Hopkins,  and  he  announced  in  the  beginning  that  if 
the  time  ever  came  when  his  vote  could  defeat  Hopkins  it  would 
be  cast  for  the  man  who  would  defeat  him. 

Then  we  come  to  another — the  departed  Charles  Luke.  Not 
one  single  man  who  had  aught  to  do  with  the  election  of  Sen- 
ator, not  one  single  man  who  was  paying  attention  to  the 
election  of  Senator  but  knew  that  Luke  would  vote  for  anybody 
in  order  to  defeat  Senator  Hopkins.  All  who  served  with  the 
Senator,  either  in  the  House  or  in  this  body,  remember  him 
very  well.  You  knew  him  a  lot  better  than  I  did,  and  I  helped 
to  send  him  here.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Senator  Hop- 
kins had  one  of  the  most  bitter  and  most  partisan  tongues  of 
any  man  who  ever  sat  in  this  body.  If  he  had  a  weakness  at 
all,  it  was  that.  When  he  went  through  Luke's  district  he  used 
that  tongue  for  all  it  was  worth  denouncing  Luke.  He  seldom 
made  a  campaign  that  he  did  not  denounce  Democrats  every- 
where he  went. 

It  may  be  the  right  policy  in  a  campaign ;  it  may  be  the 
proper  thing  to  do  if  you  want  to  get  office;  but  it  is  not 
the  policy  I  have  ever  adopted.  I  have  laid  the  principles  of 
my  party  before  my  constituents  and  left  it  to  them  to  decide, 
and  I  have  denounced  nobody.  Renunciation  gets  nowhere. 
It  never  placed  a  law  on  the  statute  book.  No  man  who  has 
any  sense  would  make  a  .campaign  along  those  lines.  Senator 
Hopkins  ,made  these  bitter  enemies  among  the  Democrats,  and 
they  were  willing  to  vote  for  anybody  to  defeat  him  in  his  de- 
sire to  be  returned  to  this  body. 

We  come  now  to  DeWolf.  You  have  heard  his  name  men- 
tioned on  this  floor.  What  about  DeWolf?  DeWolf  stated  upon 
the  stand  that  he  was  ready  to  vote  for  Hopkins,  and  that  he 
was  going  to  try  to  get  other  Democrats  to  vote  for  Hopkins, 
to  break  the  deadlock;  that  he  was  tired  of  his  service  in 
Springfield  and  wanted,  to  get  back  home  to  his  farm  and  attend 
to  his  own  business,  and  that  not  only  would  he  vote  for  Hop- 
kins, but  everybody  in  Springfield  at  that  time  knew  he  would 
vote  for  any  Republican  or  any  Democrat  who  could  be  electe3 
to  break  the  deadlock.  When  the  roll  was  called  he  voted  for  me 
for  the  same  reason  that  he  was  willing  to  vote  for  anybody  else. 

Then  we  come  to  Senator  Broderick,  who  voted  for  me.  You 
have  all  heard  his  name.  Senator  Broderick  I  have  known  (I 
can  not  measure  the  time)  for  probably  more  than  15  years. 
My  old  district  is  filled  with  Senator  Broderick's  friends  and 
relatives.  There  never  was  a  time  when  I  had  a  contest  in  the 
district,  and  these  same  newspapers  that  are  hounding  me  now 
and  always  have  hounded  me  undertook  to  drive  me  out  of 
Congress,  when,  without  any  solicitation  on  my  part,  Senator 
Broderick  sent  word  to  his  Democratic  friends  in  the  district 
and  went  there  himself  and  pleaded  with  them,  and  asked  them 
to  vote  for  LORIMER  and  they  did  vote  for  LORIMER. 

Let  me  say  now,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  support  I  received 
from  Democrats  in  that  congressional  district  when  these 
assassins  of  character  were  trying  to  destroy  me,  I  would  not 
have  been  in  the  Lower  House  of  Congress,  much  less  occupying 
a  seat  in  this  body  to-day. 

I  never  solicited  a  vote  from  a  Democrat  under  false  pre- 
tenses. No  Democrat  who  ever  voted  for  me  ever  thought  that 
81979—9726 


22 

when  I  was  sent  to  Congress  I  would  support  the  principles  of 
the  great  party  to  which  he  belonged.  No  Democrat  was  ever 
deceived  into  voting  for  me  for  a  seat  in  Congress.  Everybody 
knows,  and  with  God's  help  everybody  will  know,  where  I 
stand  on  every  question  until  my  time  shall  come  to  leave  this 
earth. 

So  it  was  not  from  deception  that  I  received  that  support,  nor 
was  it  from  deception  or  by  deception  that  I  received  the  sup- 
port of  Broderiek  when  he  voted  for  me  for  United  States 
Senator. 

Senator  Gorman,  another  Democrat,  lives  in  the  old  district 
I  represented  that  gave  a  Democratic  majority  of  all  the  wav 
from  5,000  to  17,000  every  election  we  had  except  the  elections 
when  I  was  a  candidate 'for  a  seat  in  the  house  of  representa- 
tives. In  every  election  except  one  Senator  Gorman,  as  a  Demo- 
crat, voted  for  me.  He  was  one  of  the  best  friends  I  had  in 
that  congressional  district.  The  only  time  he  ever  voted  against 
me  was  when  his  chum  ran  in  opposition  to  me.  When  he  was 
elected  to  the  senate  the  first  time  I  went  to  Springfield  I  met 
hin$in  the  St.  Nicholas  Hotel  and  he  began  the  discussion  of 
this\J5enatorship.  He  said,  "If  the  time  ever  comes,  LORIMER, 
that  ^the  Democrats  and  the  Republicans  can  elect  you,  depend 
upon  me  to  do  what  I  have  always  done,  to  vote  for  you  when 
the  roll  is  called." 

Senators  Rainey  and  Jandus  and  I  were  raised  in  the  same 
neighborhood.  The  same  is  true  of  Representatives  Cermak 
and  Forst.  I  was  associated  with  them  and  with  their  friends 
for  many  years. 

Representative  Geshkewich  I  have  known  for  more  than  15 
years.  I  have  known  him  at  home ;  I  have  known  him  in  the 
legislature;  I  have  known  him  in  political  contests  in  my  city 
and  my  county,  and  he  would  have  gone  further  to  serve  me 
than  he  would  have  gone  to  have  served  any  Democrat  in  our 
State.  That  is  why  I  got  Geshkewich's  vote. 

I  am  not  going  to  give  all  the  history  and  all  the  reasons  that 
led  up  to  the  friendships  which  grew  up  between  these  Demo- 
crats and  myself  over  a  period  of  40  years,  but  I  think  it  is 
due  to  the  Senate-  that  I  should  relate  one  or  two  of  the  cir- 
cumstances that  finally  led  up  to  the  voting  of  Democrats  for  a 
Republican. 

John  Griffin  voted  for  me.  John  Griffin  lives  in  the  neigh- 
borhood I  lived  in  40  years  ago.  I  can  not  remember  just 
when  it  was  that  I  made  his  acquaintance;  it  is  so  far  back. 
We  have  been  friends  all  that  time.  But  that  was  not  the  single 
reason  why  Griffin  voted  for  me. 

When  I  was  a  boy  and  started  out  in  the  world  the  first 
dollar  I  made  was  by  selling  newspapers.  I  had  been  well 
taken  care  of  at  Rome,  with  no  responsibility,  with  nothing  to 
look  after.  I  had  been  brought  up  as  mothers  would  bring  up 
their  boys  if  they  had  all  to  do  with  it;  almost  at  mother's 
apron  strings  all  the  time.  At  the  time  it  became  necessary 
for  me  to  go  out  and  earn  a  living  I  was  10  years  old.  I  had 
had  no  experience.  I  knew  nothing  about  where  to  turn. 
Friends  in  the  neighborhood  suggested  that  I  might  make  a 
dollar  by  selling  papers  in  the  morning,  and  I  began  peddling 
papers  and  blacking  boots. 

After  I  had  been  at  work  for  a  time  (I  remember  it  as  well 
as  if  it  were  yesterday)  I  went  over  to  the  Tribune  building 
81979—9726 


23 

and  down  into  the  basement  and  bought  50  Tribunes,  la 
those  days  the  papers  were  not  folded  as  they  are  now.  They 
were  counted  out,  first  the  heading  and  then  the  supplement, 
and  shoved  out  of  the  window  to  the  boy  purchasing  them;  and 
then  he  went  away  into  a  doorway  or  hallway  and  folded  them 
and  put  them  together. 

One  Sunday  morning  as  I  came  up  out  of  the  basement  a 
crowd  of  boys  surrounded  me.  Some  held  me  by  the  hands  and 
others  by  the  throat,  and  they  pulled  my  headings  out  from 
under  my  arm  and  then  let  me  go.  They  disappeared.  I  was 
standing  there  brooding  not  only  over  the  dollar  that  I  might 
have  made  out  of  the  sale  of  those  papers,  but  the  dollar  and  a 
half  that  I  had  paid  for  them,  because  the  supplement  was  of 
no  value  without  the  heading,  when  another  boy  came  along 
with  an  armful  of  papers  and  asked  me  what  was  the  matter, 
why  I  was  so  downcast.  I  told  him  the  story.  He  looked  at 
me  for  a  moment  and  handed  his  papers  over  to  me  and  said, 
"Stand  back  there  in  the  doorway.  Stay  there  until  I  come 
back."  He  went  away,  and  in  about  five  minutes  he  returned 
and  he  had  my  headings  in  his  hand.  He  said,  "Here  are  your 
papers.  Now  see  to  it  that  they  don't  take  them  away  from 
you  again."  Out  of  that  little  incident  grew  a  friendship  to 
the  extent  that  almost  every  week  I  helped  him.  We  had  in 
our  town  at  that  time  a  Saturday  afternoon  paper  called  the 
Gazette.  In  the  territory  that  I  worked  I  sold  all  of  mine,  and 
this  boy  usually  had  some  left  over.  We  used  to  call  it  in 
those  days  getting  "stuck."  He  would  give  them  to  me  and  I 
would  take  them  up  into  my  territory  and  sell  them  for  him. 
Sometimes  there  was  only  one  paper,  but  it  saved  him  5  cents 
and  he  made  the  profit  on  it  of  another  5  cents.  Sometimes 
there  were  half  a  dozen,  and  he  saved  his  30  cents  and  made  a 
profit  of  30  cents. 

That  friendship  grew  up  on  that  basis.  A  dollar  and  a  half 
he  had  saved  for  me,  and  one  dollar  was  more  to  me,  Senator 
ROOT,  in  those  days  than  $1,000,000  would  be  to  many  of  the 
people  of  this  country  to-day.  What  grew  up  out  of  that  little 
incident  was  a  friendship  and  a  gratitude  that  has  lasted  for 
over  40  years.  This  man  that  I  speak  of  as  a  man  now  was  a 
boy  then.  He  was  a  sort  of  a  hero  with  the  newsboys — a  sort 
of  a  king  of  the  crowd — and  what  he  said  they  should  do  they 
did. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  Senators  in  this  chamber  have  heard 
his  name  because  the  newspapers  of  my  town  are  ringing  with 
it  every  day.  In  those  days  we  called  him  Hiaky  Dink.  His 
name  is  Michael  Kenna.  The  nickname  has  followed  him  to 
this  day.  He  is  the  leading  Democrat  in  the  neighborhood  in 
which  he  lives.  John  Griffin  represents  that  district.  When  the 
papers  published  the  story  that  LORIMER  would  probably  be  a 
candidate  for  Senator  he  came  to  my  office  and  said  to  me  sub- 
stantially this: 

Bill,  I 'understand  you  are  going  to  be  a  candidate  for  United  States 
Senator,  and  that  you  can  not  be  elected  unless  you  get  Democratic 
votes.  You  can  depend  upon  it  that  if  your  name  is  presented  John 
Griffin  will  vote  for  you  if  no  other  member  of  the  legislature  does. 

Can  the  Senator  from  New  York  understand  a  situation  of 
that  kind?  Has  he  ever  come  up  through  conditions  of  that 
sort,  which  bind  men  together  more  firmly  than  all  the  things 
that  can  be  done  for  him  when  he  has  grown  to  manhood — - 
after  he  has  been  successful? 
81979—9726 


24 

When  we  quit  selling  papers  Michael  Kenna  went  one  way 
and  I  went  another.  He  became  a  Democrat  and  I  became  a 
Republican.  But  there  never  has  been  a  time  in  40  years  when 
we  could  help  each  other  that  we  have  failed  to  do  it  without 
solicitation,  and  almost  invariably  without  notifying  the  other 
of  our  performance  of  what  we  considered  our  duty  unless  it 
was  necessary  to  do  so.  It  may  be  the  Senator  from  New  York 
and  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  and  some  other  Senators 
can  not  understand  that  kind  of  a  friendship. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.     Mr.  President 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT.  Does  the  Senator  from  Illinois 
yield  to  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota? 

Mr.  LORIMER.    Certainly. 

Mr.  CRAWFORD.  I  do  not  think  there  is  a  person  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  a  story  o'f  that  kind  does  not  appeal  to.  I  want  to 
say  to  the  Senator  from  Illinois  he  is  not  the  only  poor  boy  who 
has  made  his  way  through  hardships  to  the  Senate,  and  he  can 
not  plead  that  he  is  the  only  one. 

Mr.  LORIMER.  I  am  not  pleading  that  I  am  the  only  one  who 
has  made  his  way  through  this  world  and  is  now  sitting  in  the 
Senate,  nor  am  I  pleading  poverty  or  hard  knocks  as  a  reason 
why  I  should  sit  in  this  body.  I  am  giving  to  the  Senators  the 
truth  as  to  why  these  men  voted  for  me  for  United  States  Sen- 
ator. I  am  not  pleading  for  sympathy.  I  do  not  want  sym- 
pathy. This  is  not  a  question  of  sympathy.  It  is  a  question  of 
right  or  wrong.  If  the  Senate  can  believe  me  to  be  the  low, 
vile  creature  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota  and  the  Senator 
from  New  York  and  other  Senators  who  have  talked  against 
me  would  have  you  believe  me  to  be,  then  there  is  a  plain  duty 
staring  you  squarely  in  the  face,  regardless  of  the  testimony  in 
this  record.  If  I  could  be  the  foul  wretch  that  you,  Senators, 
have  sought  to  paint  me,  regardless  of  how  I  came  here,  by 
right  or  by  wrong,  I  should  be  driven  from  yonder  door  with 
the  stamp  of  infamy  branded  upon  my  back.  I  am  not  plead- 
ing for  sympathy.  I  am  trying  to  narrate  the  truth  of  my 
election  as  it  was,  not  as  Senators  would  have  the  Senate 
believe  it. 

Then  I  come  to  another,  George  Hilton,  a  Democrat,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  legislature,  and  he  has  been  for  many  years.  In  my 
State  there  is  a  great  deal  of  patronage  that  is  known  as 
"the  minority  patronage"  given  to  Democrats.  In  my  career 
of  over  20  years,  and  on  account  of  the  position  I  have  held 
in  my  party,  I  have  had  much  to  say  about  the  disposition  of 
that  patronage.  Several  years  ago  it  happened  to  fall  to  me 
to  suggest  that  George  Hilton  should  be  appointed  to  the  chief 
bailiff's  office  in  my  city,  a  place  that  pays  him  well,  and  a 
place  for  the  holding  of  which  he  is  very  much  gratified. 

Representative  Hruby  was  also  a  boy  from  my  own  neigh- 
borhood. I  have  helped  him  and  his  friends  for  the  past  25 
years. 

Walter  A  Lantz,  a  member  of  the  general  assembly,  is  a 
man  who,  through  my  assistance,  was  appointed  a  member  of 
the  civil  service  board  of  the  county  in  which  I  live. 

John  J.  McLaughlin  and  George  L.  McConnell  are  botii  mem- 
bers from  the  congressional  district  where  I  live.  I  have  known 
them  both  many  years.  I  do  not  know  how  many  favors  they 
have  done  for  me  or  how  many  I  have  done  for  them,  but  I 
would  say  that  they  are  probablv  almost  innumerable. 
81979—9726 


25 

Thomas  J.  O'Brien,  John  O'Xeil  and  John  J.  Poulton  are 
men  with  whom  or  with  whose  close  political  friends  I  have 
been  associated  ever  since  I  have  been  in  politics. 

John  P.  Walsh  is  a  resident  of  my  former  congressional  dis- 
trict. He  is  now  and  has  been  for  years  in  the  circuit  clerks' 
office  of  our  county,  at  the  suggestion  of  my  friends  and  myself. 

John  C.  Werdell,  Frank  Wilson  and  Bob  Wilson — Frank 
"Wilson  I  have  known  for  years. 

Peter  F.  Galligan.  I  do  not  know  how  long  I  have  known 
Peter,  but  Peter  has  been  a  Democrat  all  these  years;  a  leader 
in  the  Democratic  party;  for  many  years  a  member  of  the 
legislature ;  and  at  one  time  he  served  in  the  senate  of  our 
State.  So  partisan  is  Peter,  or  so  partisan  was  Peter,  that, 
though  I  was  his  friend,  he  would  noi  ask  a  favor  from  me ; 
yet  at  the  same  time  he  would  go  any  length  to  serve  me;  but 
about  15  years  ago  when  everybody  was  broke,  when  every- 
body was  hard  up,  Peter,  with  the  balance  of  us,  was  also 
hard  up.  It  was  the  most  trying  time  of  his  life.  Peter's 
wife  was  sick — sick  unto  death — and  he  did  not  have  a  dollar 
at  home,  no  money  to  pay  the  doctor,  nor  any  money  to  buy 
medicine,  no  money  to  furnish  coal  to  keep  the  home  warm. 
Then  he  came  to  me  and  related  his  circumstances.  I  secured 
an  appointment  for  him,  out  of  which  he  received  a  fair  salary, 
with  which  he  was  able  to  take  care  of  his  sick  wife  and  give 
to  her  such  nourishment  as  she  required  during  those  long 
painful  days,  and  finally,  to  give  her  a  decent  burial.  He  had 
gone  to  all  his  friends;  he  had  called  on  all  his  Democratic 
leaders  for  help,  but  he  had  called  in  vain.  When  he  came  to 
me  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  be  able  to  help  him,  and  from 
that  day  to  this  the  gratitude  of  Peter  F.  Galligan  has  made 
him  almost  my  willing  slave.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world 
within  the  bounds  of  decency,  there  is  no  honorable  thing  that 
he  might  do  that  I  would  ask  him  to  do,  that  he  would  not 
do  with  the  greatest  of  pleasure.  The  day  I  was  elected  in 
the  house  of  representatives  in  Springfield,  when  I  was  called 
upon  to  address  that  body,  just  before  I  went  up  to  the  speaker's 
desk,  I  was  met  by  Peter  Galligan  with  the  tears  streaming 
down  his  cheeks,  tears  of  joy,  tears  of  great  pleasure,  tears 
of  gratitude  for  an  opportunity  that  had  been  afforded  him  to 
pay  back  what  he  thought  was  a  great  obligation,  but  which 
to  me  amounted  to  nothing  at  all.  It  was  that  sort  of  thing 
that  made  Peter  Galligan  my  friend ;  it  was  that  act  that 
made  him  my  devoted  friend ;  and  I  know  there  is  no  man 
in  Illinois — I  care  not  to  what  party  he  belongs — for  whom 
Peter  Galligan  would  go  so  far  or  make  so  many  sacrifices,  or 
would  give  up  so  much  for,  as  he  would  for  me.  When  he 
cast  his  vote  he  did  not  think  he  was  making  a  sacrifice,  be- 
cause in  the  house  of  representatives  when  the  roll  was  called 
and  his  name  was  reached — because  Republicans  and  Democrats 
had  stated  upon  that  floor  that  the  Democrats  who  voted  for 
me  would  live  to  rue  the  day,  that  they  would  be  ostracized 
and  driven  out  of  the  party — when  his  name  was  called,  he  said : 
"Mr.  Speaker,  I  do  not  agree  with  the  statements  made  here. 
I  will  not  be  ostracized  from  my  party;  I  will  not  rue  the  day 
that  I  vote  for  LORIMER.  When  the  people  from  my  district 
know  that  I  am  returning  after  this  vote  is  cast,  they  will 
meet  me  at  the  depot  with  a  brass  band,  and  say,  'Here  comes 
our  hero.' "  Peter  Galligan  is  now  a  member  of  the  general 
81079 — 9726 


26 

assembly,  re-elected  after  his  vote  cast  for  me,  and  re-elected 
by  an  overwhelming  majority. 

Much  has  been  said  of  Emanuel  A.  Abrahams — "Manny" 
Abrahams  they  say,  and  that  was  what  we  called  him  when  he 
was  a  boy.  "The  bellwether,"  "the  bellwether,"  goes  ringing 
all  through  the  speech  of  the  Senator  from  New  York.  How 
about  "Manny"  Abrahams?  It  is  only  a  short  story,  and  1 
will  tell  you  a  little  of  "Manny"  Abrahams. 

When  I  was  about  20  years  of  age  I  was  running  a  street 
car  on  South  Halsted  street  in  Chicago.  In  those  days,  early 
in  the  morning  the  loads  were  all  carried  down  town,  and  com- 
ing back  we  had  very  few  passengers.  About  that  time  the 
Jews  were  moving  over  into  the  neighborhood  of  Halsted  and 
Twelfth  Streets — only  a  few;  but  as  time  went  on  the  numbers 
increased.  They  were  all  industrious  men.  They  came  to 
Halsted  and  Twelfth  Streets  to  take  a  car  to  go  out  to  the 
suburbs  with  their  big  packs  of  goods  and  work  their  way 
home,  disposing  of  their  wares  during  the  day.  In  those  days 
we  had  a  rule  which  permitted  the  conductor  either  to  take  or 
reject  passengers  with  large  packages.  Then  the  prejudice 
against  that  people  in  that  neighborhood  was  very  strong  and 
very  bitter.  Many  of  the  conductors  when  they  arrived  at 
Twelfth  Street  would  refuse,  even  with  an  empty  car,  to  allow 
them  to  ride.  Frequently  I  have  seen  those  men  get  on  the  car 
with  a  pack,  lay  it  on  the  platform,  and  have  seen  the  con- 
ductor stop  the  car  and  kick  the  pack  out  into  the  street,  and 
then  the  <v-  moved  on,  and  the  passenger  stayed  there  or  else 
he  walked  out  into  the  suburbs.  Either  my  folk  taught  me  to 
have  prejudice  against  nobody  or  God  made  me  that  way. 
So  I  have  no  prejudice  against  anybody  of  any  nationality. 
When  I  came  along  in  the  morning  and  had  no  passengers  I 
always  took  those  men  on  board  with  their  packs  and  carried 
them  out  to  the  end  of  the  line,  until  I  became  known  among 
them  as  the  man  they  could  ride  with.  So  they  waited  for 
my  car.  It  turned  out  after  awhile  that  every  morning  I 
would  get  a  large  load  of  those  men.  In  increased  numbers 
they  moved  into  that  neighborhood.  I  was  known  as  their 
frie'nd.  It  was  a  small  thing  to  do,  and  there  was  no  reason 
why  men  should  have  any  gratitude  on  account  of  me  permitting 
them  to  ride  and  pay  their  fares;  but  they  did  have  it.  After  I 
quit  service  on  the  cars  I  lived  in  the  same  ward  with  those 
people  and  as  they  came  in  I  became  better  acquainted  with  them. 

Then  I  entered  into  politics.  When  I  entered  into  politics  not 
one  of  them  was  ever  permitted  to  vote  at  the  polls.  Nobody 
would  let  them  have  anything  to  do  with  or  allowed  them  to  go 
near  the  polls;  and  if  they  undertook  to  go  there,  they  were 
insulted,  abused,  assaulted,  and  knocked  down,  bricks  were 
thrown  at  them,  and  they  were  driven  from  the  polls.  I  organ- 
ized every  precinct  in  which  they  lived,  and  we  gave  them 
protection.  It  got  so  they  came  to  my  home  at  night  and  talked 
over  their  little  troubles.  There  might  be  a  dozen  or  probably  fifty 
coming  to  my  home,  laying  their  little  troubles  at  my  door 
and  asking  for  help.  I  helped  them  always.  Then  I  moved  out 
of  the  neighborhood;  but  when  I  go  down  there  now  to  attend  a 
meeting — and  I  go  there  about  once  every  year  or  two;  they 
have  large  halls  and  large  meetings — I  am  met  there  by  the  old 
citizens  and  the  rabbis  of  the  neighborhood ;  I  am  taken  around 
and  introduced  to  the  newcomers.  I  am  not  introduced  as  "Mr. 
81979—9726 


LORIMBR;"  I  am  not  presented  as  "Congressman  LORIMER;"  I  was 
not  made  acquainted  with  these  people  as  "Senator  LORIMER;" 
but  I  was  taken  from  one  to  the  other  and  introduced  as  "the 
Fa»her."  Does  the  Senator  from  New  York  know  what  that 
means?  When  people  come  to  believe  in  you,  when  they  come 
to  trust  you  and  almost  to  revere  you,  as  these  people  do  me, 
when  they  come  to  the  point  of  introducing,  you  as  "the 
Father,"  that  is  the  greatest  compliment  that  race  of  people 
can  pay  to  any  man.  Whether  I  deserve  that  confidence  or  not, 
whether  I  have  earned  their  gratitude  or  not,  that  is  the  condi- 
tion there,  and  any  man  who  would  declare  for  the  political,  for 
the  business,  for  the  financial,  or  for  the  social  destruction  of 
LORIMER  and  run  for  office  in  that  district  could  not  get  votes 
enough  to  make  a  respectable  showing.  No  man  can  go  among 
those  people  into  that  district  as  my  ememy  aad  live  politically — I 
state  that  not  in  any  sense  of  boasting,  but  because  it  is  a  matter 
of  fact — and  "Manny"  Abrahams  could  not  have  gone  back  home 
and  looked  his  people  in  the  face  if  I  had  been  a  candidate  and 
had  been  beaten  by  1  vote  and  he  had  failed  to  vote  for  me. 

"Manny"  Abrahams  the  bellwether!  I  say  it  goes  ringing 
all  through  the  speech  of  the  Senator  from  New  York.  For 
what  purpose?  For  any  other  purpose  than  to  create  prejudice? 
I  wish  I  could  think  so.  A  bellwether;  the  first  man  om  the 
roll  call  for  everybody  to  follow,  as  though  a  bellwether  was 
a  new  thing  in  legislative  bodies,  as  though  we  had  never  heard 
of  a  bellwether  here,  as  though  they  had  never  had  a  bell- 
wether in  the  House  of  Representatives;  or  as  though  they  had 
never  had  a  bellwether  in  any  legislative  body  in  the  United 
States.  We  have  our  bellwether  here ;  we  have  the  Democratic 
bellwether;  we  have  the  "insurgent"  bellwether  [laughter], 
and  we  have  the  "stalwart"  bellwether.  When  I  happen  to  be 
absent  from  this  Chamber  and  the  bell  rings  announcing  the 
roll  call,  if  I  chance  to  step  in  the  door  in  time  to  hear  the  name 
of  Senator  ALDRICH  called,  he  is  my  bellwether.  ]  Laughter.] 
I  know  where  my  vote  belongs,  and  I  vote  as  he  votes.  If  he 
happens  to  be  absent,  I  listen  to  the  roll  call  until  the  clerk 
comes  to  the  name  of  my  distinguished  colleague,  the  Senator 
from  Illinois,  and  then,  when  he  bas  voted,  Senator  CULLOM 
becomes  my  bellwether.  I  know  where  to  vote  from  that  time 
on.  If  I  happen  to  get  in  a  little  later,  I  wait  for  the  roll  call 
to  reach  Senator  GALLINGER'S  name;  and  after  he  has  voted  I 
know  my  place.  Then  we  go  along  a  little  further,  and  if  I 
happen  to  come  in  after  he  has  answered  the  roll  call.  I  wait 
until  Senator  LODGE  has  voted.  [Laughter.]  Then,  if  I  find 
that  he  and  Senator  LA  FOLLETTE  have  voted  the  same  way,  I 
wait  for  somebody  else  to  vote,  and  then  somebody  else  becomes 
my  bellwether.  [Laughter  on  the  floor  and  in  the  galleries.] 

Senators  know  that  when  the  roll  is  called  they  walk  in  the 
door  and  ask  "How  is  our  vote."  I  have  heard  many  a  Demo- 
crat say  that.  I  sit  on  this  side  with  them.  I  do  not  want  to 
know  their  secrets;  but  sometimes  they  talk  too  loud;  and  they 
ask  that  question  so  that  I  can  not  aroid  hearing  it.  So  I  know 
they  have  a  bellwether.  While  I  do  not  know  it  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  venture  the  statement  that  the  time  has  been,  I  will  go 
a  little  farther  than  that,  and  say  the  time  will  come,  when  the 
Senator  from  New  York  will  walk  into  this  Chamber  some  day 
when  the  roll  is  being  called  and  ask  somebody  in  whom  he  has 
confidence  "How  is  our  vote"  and  then  vote  that  way. 
81979—9728 


28 

Why,  Mr.  President,  the  talk  about  "bellwether"  is  all  non- 
sense. There  is  a  bellwether  in  every  legislative  assembly  in 
this  country,  and  so  long  as  there  are  parties  and  so  long  as 
there  are  principles  that  divide  parties,  there  will  be  bell- 
wethers. The  talk  of  bellwethers  fools  nobody;  it  will  create 
no  suspicion  that  will  injure  anybody  either  in  this  forum  or  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  or  in  any  other*  legislative  body 
in  this  country  or  anywhere  else,  unless  it  be  upon  the  Chautau- 
qua  platform.  [Laughter.] 

Mr.  President,  grave  charges  have  been  made  against  my 
right  to  hold  a  seat  in  this  body.  If  I  read  the  speeches  of 
Senators  rightly,  and  if  I  understand  what  they  mean — some  of 
them  go  even  to  the  extent  of  making  almost  the  direct  charge — 
if  I  understand  them  at  all,  they  would  leave  an  impression 
upon  this  body  that  I  was  elected  by  bribery  and  corruption, 
and  that  not  only  was  I  elected  b'y  bribery  and  corruption,  but 
that  I  was  on  hand  aiding  it,  giving  it  the  stamp  of  my  approval, 
and  sanctioning  it.  In  proof  of  that  statement  they  point  out 
that  Lee  O'Neil  Browne  was  my  agent — my  authorized  agent. 
What  else  can  it  mean?  They  would  have  you  believe  that 
Lee  O'Neil  Browne  tied  up  in  one  package  30  Democratic  votes, 
carried  them  into  the  hall  of  the  general  assembly,  dumped 
them  down  there,  bought  body  and  soul,  and  sold  and  delivered 
them  to  me.  I  can  understand  how  that  might  make  an  impres- 
sion on  Senators  who  know  nothing  about  the  situation  and  know 
nothing  about  the  politics  of  my  State.  But  here,  Mr.  President, 
is  a  list  of  34  Democrats  that  were  for  me  for  United  States 
Senator  on  my  account,  and  not  because  Lee  O'Xeil  Browne 
delivered  them  to  me. 

Democratic  waterway  support. — Senator  Hearn  :  Representatives  Blair, 
Espy,  Gorman,  Link,  Riley,  Staymates,  H.  A.  Shephard. 

Anti-Hopkins. — Representatives  Alsehuler,  Luke. 

To  end  deadlock. — Representative  De  Wolf. 

Democrat  personal  support. — Senators  Broderick,  Gorman,  Jandus, 
Rainey  ;  Representatives  Abrahams,  Cermak,  Forst,  Geskewich,  Griffin, 
Hilton,  Hruby,  Lantz,  McLaughlin,  McConnell,  E.  J.  Murphy,  O'Brien, 
O'Neil,  Poulton,  Walsh,  Werdell,  F.  J.  Wilson,  R.  E.  Wilson,  Galligan. 

Seventeen  or  18 — 19,  I  think  it  was — of  the  men  who  belonged 
to  Lee  O'Neil  Browne's  faction  who  voted  for  me,  would  have 
voted  for  me  if  I  had  been  a  candidate  for  Senator,  even  though 
Lee  O'Neil  Browne  labored  with  them  throughout  the  whole  ses- 
sion— if  I  had  be^n  a  candidate  through  the  whole  session — to 
oppose  me.  He  did  not  deliver  them.  They  delivered  him. 
They  were  my  friends,  and  there  is  not  one  of  them  who  would 
not  have  gone  further  on  a  personal  matter  for  me  than  they 
would  have  gone  for  Lee  O'Neil  Browne,  and  many  of  them 
would  have  made  more  sacrifices  for  me  personally  than  they 
would  for  any  Democrat  in  the  State  of  Illinois";  and  I  measure 
my  words  when  I  make  that  statement.  Thirty-four  of  the  53. 
for  one  personal  reason  or  another,  voted  for  me  and  pleaded 
with  the  other  19  Democrats  and  prevailed  upon  them  to  vote 
for  me  also.  That  is  the  history  of  that  vote. 

Much  has  been  made  in  statements  here  upon  this  floor  of  the 
fact  that  I  am  a  personal  friend  of  Speaker  Shurtleff,  and  the 
further  fact  that  during  my  stay  in  Springfield  I  occupied  the 
speaker's  room  at  the  capitol;  that  I  met  Shepherd  in  the 
speaker's  room,  and  that  I  talked  with  members  in  the  speaker's 
reom,  and  that  it  was  a  suspicious  circumstance  that  I  should 
occupy  the  speaker's  room.  That  may  be  so  in  other  States. 
I  do  not  know  anything  about  the  speaker's  room  in  other  States, 
81979—9726 


29 

or  the  privacy  of  his  room  in  other  States,  but  I  do  know  ail 
about  the  speaker's  room  in  the  State  of  Illinois.  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, the  speaker's  room  of  the  State  of  Illinois  is  practically 
the  same  size  as  the  Marble  Room  outside  of  this  Senate  Cham- 
ber. It  has  more  lounges  and  sofas  in  it  than  we  have  in  the 
Marble  Room.  It  has  more  chairs  than  we  have  in  the  Marble 
Room.  It  has  a  much  greater  seating  capacity  than  the  Marble 
Room.  Our  legislative  assembly  hall  has  a  seating  arrange- 
ment all  around  the  outside  of  the  members'  chairs. 

I  do  not  know  how  it  is  in  your  State,  but  I  know  how  it  is 
in  mine.  Anyone  introduced  by  a  member  is  free  to  go  in  and 
take  possession  of  thes«  seats  in  the  assembly  room.  They 
walk  down  the  aisles  and  they  sit  and  talk  to  the  members,  and 
if  they  are  interrupting  the  legislative  proceedings  by  their  talk 
they  go  out  into  the  speaker's  room.  In  fact,  anybody  who 
goes  to  Springfield  and  is  acquainted  with  a  member  of  the 
legislature  may  go  into  the  speaker's  room.  It  is  a  meeting 
place.  Democrats  go  there  and  Republicans  go  there,  and  they 
take  their  friends  there,  and  they  sit  and  they  talk  and  they 
smoke  there.  It  is  more  of  a  smoking  room  than  a  room  of 
privacy,  and  the  door  of  the  room  is  never  locked,  except  in  the 
morning  before  the  opening  of  the  session,  when  the  steering  com- 
mittee is  occupying  it,  preparing  the  work  for  the  legislative  day. 

Great  stress  is  laid  on  the  fact  that  LORIMER  was  present  in 
Springfield  when  he  was  elected  and  that  he  occupied  the  speak- 
er's room.  Has  any  Member  of  this  Senate  ever  sat  in  the 
speaker's  room  of  the  capitol  of  his  State?  Has  any  Senator 
here  ever  sat  in  the  speaker's  room  while  the  roll  was  being 
called  that  elected  him  to  this  body?  If  he  was  there,  was  it  a 
sign  of  bribery  and  corruption? 

Oh,  Mr.  President,  if  that  is  to  be  adopted  as  the  rule,  I  do 
not  know  how  men  are  going  to  get  votes  when  they  want  to  be 
elected  to  this  great  forum.  Surely,  I  never  will  intimate  to 
anybody  anywhere  that  because  a  man  who  was  elected  to  this 
body  was  present  in  his  capitol  and  sitting  in  the  speaker's  room 
when  the  roll  was  being  called,  and  talked  to  the  Members  of  the 
legislature  in  that  room,  that  such  is  evidence  of  bribery  and 
corrupt  practices;  and  I  do  not  think,  Mr.  President,  anybody 
else  will  think  so.  I  do  not  believe  anybody  will  pay  attention 
or  give  any  weight  at  all  to  a  statement  of  that  kind,  which  I 
fear  was  made  to  cast  a  cloud  of  suspicion.  It  is  not  and  can 
not  be  evidence  of  anything  either  good  or  bad,  and  it  could  have 
had  no  other  purpose  except  to  unsettle  the  minds  of  Senators  and 
probably  lead  them  to  believe  that  maybe  something  was  wrong. 

Mr.  President,  if  the  securing  of  Democratic  votes  is  an  evi- 
dence of  wrong  doing,  then  I  have  been  doing  wrong  for  the 
past  25  years.  If  the  securing  of  Democratic  votes,  either  for 
myself  or  for  my  party  or  for  the  candidates  of  my  party  is  an 
evidence  of  corruption,  then  I  have  been  a  corruptionist  ever 
since  I  was  a  boy.  I  was  brought  up  in  a  Democratic  neighbor- 
hood, and  the  thing  that  took  me  into  politics  was  not  the  hope 
of  political  preferment.  I  was  a  Republican,  and  there  was 
nobody  in  the  precinct  to  give  me  a  Republican  ballot  the  day 
I  went  to  cast  my  first  vote  for  James  G.  Elaine.  All  the  pre- 
cincts around  my  home  were  made  up  almost  solidly  of  Demo- 
crats— 500  Democratic  votes  and  two  or  three  Republican  votes. 
There  were  not  enough  members  of  my  party  in  a  precinct  to 
fill  up  the  quota  of  judges  and  clerks  and  ticket  peddlers  on 
81979—9726 


30 

election  day.  I  was  only  24  years  old  then,  and  I  voted  for 
Biaine,  and  I  doubt  if  there  was  a  more  enthusiastic  Blaineite 
in  this  country  than  I  was,  and  nobody  was  more  disappointed 
than  I  was  at  his  defeat.  I  concluded  that  if  all  the  country 
was  managed  in  my  party  as  the  territory  that  I  lived  in  was 
managed,  that  that  in  itself,  applied  to  New  York,  was  enough  to 
defeat  Biaine  for  the  presidency.  I  made  up  my  mind  that  that 
would  never  happen  in  my  election  precinct  again. 

So  I  began  to  organize,  not  to  become  a  leader  of  my  party, 
but  to  take  care  of  my  own  precinct  two  days  in  a  year,  and 
see  that  the  ballots  were  there  for  Republicans  when  they  came 
to  vote.  That  precinct  was  organized  and  then  the  other  pre- 
cincts were  organized,  because  once  the  political  virus  is  in- 
jected into  the  white  man  there  is  no  telling  where  he  will  stop. 
So  I  went  into  the  next  precinct  and  organized  that.  And  how? 
With  Republicans?  No.  There  were  no  Republicans  there.  With 
Democrats,  young  men  of  my  age  who  had  never  affiliated  with 
their  party,  but  thought  they  were  Democrats  because  their  good 
fathers  were  Democrats.  They  joined  with  us,  and  we  organized 
one  precinct  after  another  until  the  whole  ward  was  organized. 

We  did  not  go  out  calling  Democrats  names.  We  did  not 
abuse  Democrats.  We  told  them  the  things  our  party  stood 
for,  and  asked  them  to  join  us  on  that  account;  and  after  a 
while,  with  energy  and  industry,  we  had  a  splendid  organization 
in  every  precinct  in  the  ward;  and  we  were  not  in  politics,  or 
at  least  we  did  not  know  we  were.  But  we  had  not  been  in 
politics  over  two  years  until  we  sent  a  Republican  alderman  to 
the  council  from  that  ward,  and  that  Republican  organization 
spread  from  that  ward  to  other  wards  until  the  Republican 
leaders  of  our  county  began  to  look  to  that  section  of  the 
county  for  their  Republican  majority. 

But  for  the  organization  in  that  section  the  city  of  Chicago 
would  have  been  as  strongly  Democratic  for  the  past  20  years 
as  is  the  city  of  New  York. 

This  organization,  my  friends,  was  bred  not  in  malice,  not 
in  denunciation,  but  it  was  bred  in  principle  and  fostered  by 
telling  what  we  thought  was  the  truth,  and  in  good  fellowship 
to  each  other.  It  was  not  very  long  until  the  leaders  of  the 
party  all  over  the  county  looked  to  our  territory;  and  without 
knowi»g  it,  or  rather  without  realizing  it,  and  surely  not  know- 
ing the  reason  why,  I  was  pushed  forward,  made  the  leader  in 
my  party  of  that  Democratic  section  of  the  county. 
_  I  do  not  know  whether  Senators  who  do  not  live  in  a  large 
city  and  a  large  county  understand  what  that  means.  In  our 
city  and  in  our  county  in  those  days  we  had  at  the  disposal 
of  the  party  in  power  anywhere  from  12,000  to  15,000  places, 
according  to  the  season  of  the  year,  and  when  the  Repub- 
lican party  came  into  control  of  the  city  for  the  first  time 
in  my  career,  in  1887,  the  disposition  of  all  the  patronage  in 
that  section  of  the  town  fell  into  my  hands.  I  knew  nothing 
about  it.  To  be  truthful,  I  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it. 
I  disposed  ^of  it  as  best  I  could,  and  it  was  disposed  of  among 
the  people  in  our  neighborhood,  and  these  young  men  that  came 
from  Democratic  families  into  our  party  were  chiefly  the  recip- 
ients of  what  we  had. 

From  that  time  to  this  no  man  has  ever  come  to  my  home, 

no  man  has  ever  come  to  my  office  to  ask  me  to  do  him  a  favor, 

litMe  or  big;  that,  unless  it  was  a  strictly  party  matter,  I  ever 

asked  him  his  politics.   I  do  not  know  and  I  can  not  know  whether 

81978—9726 


31 

I  properly  carried  out  my  obligations  in  the  disposition  of  those 
places  or  not;  I  do  not  know  what  people  would  think  about  it; 
but  I  do  know  that  in  the  territory  from  which  I  v_ome  90  per 
cent  of  the  Democrats,  whether  they  vote  for  me  or  not,  will  tell 
you  they  would  rather  have  LORIMER  in  Congress  or  LORIMER  m 
any  place  he  wants  to  go  than  any  man  in  their  own  party. 

As  I  have  stated  before,  it  is  not  because  I  have  ever  deceived 
a  Democrat.  No  Democrat  ever  thought  I  would  vote  with  his 
party  when  he  voted  for  me.  A  very  distinguished  senator  and 
elderly  Democrat  in  the  Illinois  General  Assembly  came  to  me — 
and  unless  Senators  ask  his  name  I  shall  withhold  it — a  few 
days  before  I  was  elected  and  he  said :  "LORIMER,  you  know 
I  would  like  to  vote  for  you,  but  I  live  down  in  a  Democratic 
country,  where  it  is  hard  to  forgive  a  Democrat  if  he  votes 
for  a  Republican;  I  think  you  ought  to  be  sent  to  the  Senate, 
and  if  you  will  vote  there  with  the  Democrats  on  the  tariff 
I  will  vote  for  you."  I  said  to  him :  "Senator,  I  can  not  do 
that."  He  thought  for  a  moment  or  two.  "Well,"  he  said,  "I 
will  go  a  little  further  with  you.  If  you  will  vote  with  Senator 
LA  FOLLETTE  and  his  followers  in  the  Senate  on  the  tariff  bill 
I  will  vote  for  you.  That  is  not  going  the  whole  distance,  but 
I  can  go  back  to  my  district  and  my  people  will  not  destroy 
me  politically  because  I  voted  for  you  if  you  will  vote  that  way." 
I  told  him  I  could  not  do  that.  Then  he  said,  "Well,  I  am 
sorry;  I  would  like  to  vote  for  you;  I  would  like  to  see  you  in 
the  Senate ;  but  I  can  not  afford  to  do  it  unless  you  can  do 
something  to  make  the  way  easy  for  me." 

So  it  is  that  at  no  time  and  at  no  place  have  I  ever  had 
Democratic  support  on  account  of  any  reason  except  pure, 
unadulterated  friendship.  In  the  last  campaign  in  which  I 
was  elected  to  Congress,  when  I  was  unable  even  to  sign  a 
letter  to  be  sent  out  to  my  constituency,  that  district  gave 
approximately  12,000  majority  to  President  Taft.  He  received 
the  largest  vote  and  the  largest  majority — or  his  electors  did, 
and  I  take  the  elector  who  received  the  highest  vote  in  the 
district.  He  received  a  larger  vote  than  any  person  other  than 
myself  running  in  that  district.  I  did  not  make  one  speech,  and 
I  did  not  see  one  man,  and  I  got  more  than  thirty-five  hundred 
plurality  more  than  President  Taft. 

Of  what  is  that  an  evidence?  Is  that  an  evidence  of  bribery? 
Is  it  an  evidence  of  corrupting  Democrats  to  vote  for  me?  If  it 
is,  then  Mr.  President  I  have  a  trail  of  corrupted  Democrats 
following  me  over  my  career  of  25  years.  If  they  were  bought 
with  money  I  would  have  been  compelled  to  buy  them  by  the 
tens  of  thousands,  and  according  to  the  theory  that  is  contended 
for  here  it  would  have  cost  millions  of  dollars. 

Mr.  President,  it  is  an  easy  matter  to  intimate  that  any 
man  is  guilty  of  wrongdoing,  and  once  the  intimation  is  made, 
I  regret  to  say,  it  is  an  easy  matter  for  many  people  to  believe 
it.  But  when  one  is  charged  with  wrongdoing,  the  facts  should 
be  laid  before  the  judging  body.  They  should  be  the  unquali- 
fied and  unadulterated  truth,  and  that  applies  more  largely,  in 
my  opinion,  to  the  question  of  unseating  a  Senator  or  a  Member 
of  the  House  of  Representatives  than  it  does  to  taking  the  life  or 
the  liberty  or  the  property  of  a  citizen.  To  turn  a  member  from 
this  or  any  other  legislative  body  on  the  suspicion  that  if  certain 
things  happened,  certain  other  things  might  happen,  would  be 
establishing  a  rule  that  would  indeed  soon  destroy  this  Republic. 
81979—9726 


32 

No  man,  not  even  the  Tribune,  has  ever  dared  to  charge  that 
I  was  ever  remotely  guilty  of  bribery  or  corrupt  practices;  and 
I  never  did,  not  only  in  this  election  but  in  any  other  election, 
use  one  dollar,  or  allow  the  use  of  one  dollar,  or  knowingly  per- 
mit the  use  of  one  dollar,  nor  had  I  the  remotest  idea  or  knowl- 
edge of  the  use  of  one  dollar  for  my  election,  the  corrupt  use 
of  it  for  bribery,  or  for  any  other  corrupt  purpose,  either  to  the 
lower  house  or  to  this  body.  If  Senators  even  suggest  that  they 
think  I  did  have  knowledge  of  any  corrupt  practices  of  any  kind, 
have  the  knowledge  in  any  degree,  I  am  very  sorry  for  it.  On 
my  word  as  a  man — and  even  the  Tribune  will  not  say  to  you 
or  intimate  to  you  that  they  know  of  any  time  lever  even  re- 
motely broke  that  word  or  violated  faith ;  even  they  will  not  say  . 
to  you  that  I  am  guilty  of  that  act — I  never  gave  nor  do  I  know 
of  any  other  person  giving  any  kind  of  a  promise,  or  any  money, 
or  anything  else  as  an  inducement  for  them  to  vote  for  me. 

My  regret,  Mr.  President,  is  that  anybody  should  think  so. 
I  claim  nothing  more  for  myself  than  any  other  man.  I  am  not 
possessed  of  any  more  virtues  than  any  other  decent  citizen  of 
this  country.  In  the  life  I  have  lived  and  worked  for  40 
years,  I  may  not  have  succeeded,  but  I  have  tried,  as  hard  as  a 
human  being  can  try,  to  live  a  life  that  would  make  me  at  least 
acceptable  to  the  decent  citizens  of  my  community.  I  have 
tried  for  40  years  to  live  a  life  that  will  make  my  neighbors 
and  my  townsmen  and  the  people  of  my  State  have  confidence 
in  me.  I  say  I  may  not  have  succeeded,  but  God  knows  I  have 
tried.  But  if  I  have  failed,  if  I  did  not  succeed,  no  living  man 
will  come  to  my  door  and  lay  the  charge  of  practicing  bribery 
or  corrupt  practices  in  any  election  that  I  ever  was  interested 
in,  be  it  for  myself  or  for  anybody  else.  I  regret  that  there  are 
Senators  in  this  Chamber  who  feel  that  they  have  been  able 
tc  find  anything  at  all  in  my  business  life,  in  my  political 
career,  in  my  social  life,  or  in  my  life  with  my  family,  that  will 
justify  them  in  even  having  a  suspicion  that  I  have  been  guilty 
of  the  charges  they  would  lay  at  my  door. 

I  say  again,  on  my  word  as  a  man  and  on  my  word  as  a 
Senator,  I  am  not  guilty,  and  I  have  no  knowledge  in  the  re- 
motest degree  that  bribery  and  corruption  were  practiced  in 
securing  a  seat  for  me  in  this  body.  No  matter  what  the  Trib- 
une says,  po  matter  what  they  have  been  able  to  do  through 
coercion  in  the  State  attorney's  office  in  my  county,  I  do  not 
believe  that  votes  were  bought  by  anybody  to  send  me  to  this  body. 

I  have  stated  that  I  knew  something  about  my  election  to 
this  body,  and  I  have  stated  to  you  what  I  know  about  it. 
What  I  have  stated  to  you  is  the  truth.  Even  the  Tribune  will 
not  dare  to  refute  the  statement  that  these  34  Democrats  voted 
for  me  for  the  reason  I  have  stated  to  you,  and  that  they 
secured  the  balance  of  the  Democratic  votes ;  and  instead  of 
Lee  O'Neil  Browne,  who  was  friendly  to  me  and  who  did  help 
me  and  to  whom  I  am  obligated,  delivering  these  53  votes  from 
the  Democratic  Party  to  me  when  I  was  elected  United  States 
.Senator,  they,  with  their  influence,  with  their  talk,  with  their 
persuasion,  delivered  Lee  O'Neil  Browne  if  there  was  any  de- 
livery of  anybody  at  any  time  during  my  election.  [Applause 
in  the  galleries.] 

The  VICE  PRESIDENT :  Occupants  of  the  galleries  will  re- 
frain from  applause.  It  is  not  permitted  under  the  usages  or 
the  Senate.  _  «gSSg5Sfea 

• 

E 


